SLC ‘Sex Cult Trials’ & College Admissions
November 2021
On the second day of court, and my first day being present, I sat in the courtroom, listening to the prosecutor name-drop the dorm building that I reside in now. I engaged in small talk with fellow reporters, a handful of which turned out to be alumni of Sarah Lawrence, now holding jobs at elite companies such as NBC and New York Magazine.
As they gossiped about the Brooklyn neighborhoods they now lived in, these students of years past had all been brought back together in a single place: the trial of a man who emotionally, physically, and sexually manipulated his daughter’s entire friend group of SLC sophomores for the greater part of a decade.
Larry Ray, born Lawrence Grecco, was rendered homeless having just left prison from serving corruption charges, moved into his daughter Talia’s dorm room at Sarah Lawrence during the opening weeks of her sophomore year in 2010. He remained there the entirety of their school year, living among her seven other roommates and on occasion even spending the night in the room of Isabella Pollock, who was consistently referred to as Talia’s best friend at the time.
After the school year ended, Larry and his daughter moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Manhattan and invited Talia’s roommates to join them, free of rent. A handful of her friends took the ex-convict up on his offer and spent nights at a time at his place, which began to serve as a meeting point for the friend group.
Santos Rosario, one of the original roommates of the Slonim Woods apartment where it all began, introduced his two sisters, both attendees of Ivy League institutions, to Larry Ray, and they started to fall for his words as well.
In his March 2022 testimony, Santos said “He did help me. My [relationship with my parents] was more distant than before, and Larry told me that ‘they weren’t good parents, they’re trying to hurt me, they weren’t good people.’ I feel terrible about it, but I bought into it. I believed. I still thought that Larry was a friend and was gonna help me.”
Larry’s actions towards the friend group quickly turned from fatherly and responsible to deceptive and unsympathetic – as he had cultivated a parental relationship with each of her friends, guiding them in their individual situations, their trust in their personal futures seemed to lay in Larry’s hands.
As Larry’s role shifted, the group of liberal arts students, mesmerized by the paternal intent, fell unknowingly into an emerging ‘cult.’
As time went on and they grew closer and the secrets of the group involved became more well-kept, Larry’s sexual assault upon the students started. Larry would “force us into sexual situations” said Santos, “and said that if we refused, we were not acting honest and truthful towards him. He saw refusal as betrayal. I felt absolutely wretched.”
Further, he sexually exploited some of the female members of the group, even selling Talia’s friend Claudia Drury into sexual slavery in exchange for money. During Claudia’s testimony, she recounted that “All the money [I earned] went back to Larry because he said I was being disruptive and destructive. And he would grab my hair and push me if I tried to [justify myself].”
Isabella as well began to have a leadership role beside Larry, allegedly instructing her schoolmates to engage in intercourse, harm themselves, and more.
In April of 2019, an article was published in New York Magazine, breaking the story of the secrets of the so-called “Sarah Lawrence Sex Cult” to the public. Written by freelance reporter Ezra Marcus, who graduated from SLC in 2014, the same year as the students who were victimized by Larry Ray, and NYM staff writer James D. Walsh, this coverage pushed the “leafy” institution into the spotlight of college scandals.
Days before the story broke, prospective transfer student Christina Bopman had been accepted admission into Sarah Lawrence. “I couldn’t decide if I was gonna transfer to Sarah Lawrence or to U[niversity of] Wisconsin” he said. “But I looked up Sarah Lawrence to show my sister what it was and all that came up was the cult stuff. It kinda turned me off, even though it was like years ago.”
After the country found out about the countless wrongdoings of Larry Ray, his trial set into motion. With the formation of the group occuring on university grounds, as is stated in the NYM piece, the scandal that had shaken the media years ago does not seem to have impacted the “whimsically sheltered” Sarah Lawrence College at all.
There is nothing to be found about the incident on the College’s website, and nothing listed regarding the group in the student handbook.
Back in the trial, Ray’s attorney, Allegra Glashausser, repeatedly cited certain locations that every student or alumnus could instantly recognize. Glashausser, a public defender, summarized the unique Sarah Lawrence ‘Donning’ system for the jury – a process that a handful of the reporters themselves were very familiar with.
Being a freshman in the same setting where the manipulation of the students began feels surreal – these students existed in the same spaces that I do, sat in the same classrooms that I do, and ate the same lousy dining hall food that I do.
We started out our college experiences the same way, however, theirs took a sinister turn.
When it is this easy to see for prospective students to see themselves almost in the same shoes as the exploited victims, how do colleges that have had major news scandals manage to still attract students?
On March 12, 2019, an investigation referred to as “Operation Varsity Blues” was made public by Andrew Lelling, the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts. Despite the catchy name given by mass media publications, as stated in a press conference by Lelling, the case covers “fifty people nationwide with participating in a conspiracy that involved, first, cheating on college entrance exams, meaning the SAT and ACT, and second, securing admission to elite colleges by bribing coaches at those schools to accept certain students under false pretenses.”
These “elite schools” referenced by Lelling include Yale, Stanford, University of Southern California, Harvard, and University of Texas. “In return for bribes,” Lelling continues, “these coaches agreed to pretend that certain applicants were recruited competitive athletes when in fact the applicants were not. As the coaches knew, the students’ athletic credentials had been fabricated.”
At a university like Yale, USC, or Stanford that is already seen as universally exceptional, it’s tricky to distinguish whether certain factors that did or did not impact admissions.
Such is the case with Columbia University, who is currently handling an internal student worker strike. Beginning in Spring 2020, “Columbia’s student workers are demanding a fair contract that includes a living wage, better healthcare, union recognition for all student workers, and protections from sexual harassment and power-based bullying” according to the union’s website.
At schools already known to be elite, such as the previously mentioned Ivy League universities, would these scandals have any impact on admissions at all?
While this push is not encouraging these applicants to pay their way in, they at least send out an application, meaning it piqued their interest. This rise in numbers is opposite from what one would expect from a university recovering from a mass admissions scandal that ripped apart their employees in the press.
Frederic Smoler teaches historical literature at Sarah Lawrence College and also graduated from the College in 1970. He says “At a school like Swarthmore College or Sarah Lawrence, when a school that’s not super well known, like what Columbia or Harvard would be considered, gets in the news, that certain college is getting the so much media attention right on their little campus,” Smoler continues. “I mean, the press is calling [Sarah Lawrence] things like ‘elite’ and ‘a hidden gem,’ you know. It could, possibly, open up soon-to-be students to schools they didn’t even know about.”
Smoler said, referring to scandals at less well-known colleges, “I mean, you know what they say — any publicity is good publicity. That’s very real. Even if it's a very salacious thing that people are saying, the word is still getting out.”