Lawrence Ray, the former New Jersey convict accused of running a sex cult at Sarah Lawrence College in a New York magazine exposé last year, has been charged for targeting his daughter’s friends and indoctrinating them into a sex trafficking ring at the elite school.
Ray was arrested and charged Tuesday for indoctrination and exploitation, engaging in sex trafficking, extortion and forced labor, the New York Times reported.
An indictment released Tuesday echoes claims revealed in the New York magazine feature that Ray moved into his daughter’s dorm at Sarah Lawrence shortly after being released from prison and began manipulating her friends and other students. Ray reportedly “subjected his victims to sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse” for nearly a decade.
Ray is accused of extorting money and unpaid labor from his young victims and forcing at least one into prostitution for his financial benefit, using abusive tactics such as sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, physical violence and threats of legal action. The ex-con is also accused of laundering about $1 million he obtained from his victims, according to the indictment.
“He controlled every aspect of our lives,” an ex-boyfriend of Ray’s daughter told New York mag reporters Ezra Marcus and James D. Walsh last year. “When we ate, what we did, when we went to bed.”
Ray has also been linked to disgraced former New York police commissioner Bernard B. Kerik, who called Ray “psychotic” in the New York mag feature.
“Larry Ray is a psychotic con man who has victimized every friend he’s ever had,” Kerik told the magazine. “It’s been close to 20 years since I last heard from him, yet his reign of terror continues.”
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