Cultist made me & my sis wear diapers
Ex-Sarah Lawrence student tells of abuse
The diapers were the final straw.
A victim of accused Sarah Lawrence sex cult leader Lawrence Ray testified Monday that he finally escaped the group shortly after Ray forced him and his sister to wear diapers because they were “acting like children.”
Santos Rosario, on the stand for his third day of testimony in Manhattan Federal Court, said he ditched the creepy cult in 2015 after growing more and more terrified of the leader of “The Ray Family.”
Rosario said he realized he needed to leave the cult after Ray ordered him and his sister Felicia, who was also a member of the bizarre cult, to sit around Ray’s Upper East Side apartment wearing just diapers. Ray’s righthand woman Isabella Pollok, who is also charged in the case, put the diapers on the siblings, Rosario said.
“I don’t remember the context or what we were being blamed for this time, but Larry said that me and my sister were supposedly acting like children and he had Isabella put diapers on us,” Rosario remember. “We just waited there until Larry said we could take them off.”
Rosario, now 30, said he moved into a homeless shelter after five years in the cult rather than endure Ray’s interrogations and physical abuse.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. ... These interrogations with Larry started getting scarier and longer. And I couldn’t articulate at the time, but I was terrified to be there. So I just looked for an opportunity to run away. I had been in the shelter before so they sent me to the same one I had been in the year before,” Rosario said.
Ray has pleaded not guilty to a 17-count racketeering indictment that charges him with mentally, physically and sexually abusing college students and other young adults between 2010 and 2020. Pollok has pleaded not guilty and will face a separate trial.
Ray is accused of extorting his victims — including Rosario — for millions of dollars using threats, physical violence and compromising information and videos that he used as collateral. Ray is accused of even making one young follower work for him as a prostitute.
During cross-examination, Ray’s defense team sought to portray Rosario as an untrustworthy witness by digging into his past mental health issues.
Rosario detailed last week how Ray cracked his legs with a hammer and encouraged him to kill himself. In one video shown in court, Ray made Rosario smack himself in the face — a disturbing demonstration of his power over his followers.
Rosario met Ray in 2010, when he was a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence, through Ray’s daughter, Talia Ray, whom Rosario was dating at the time. At first, Rosario found Lawrence Ray charismatic and trustworthy. But the friendship soon took a dark, manipulative turn.
By 2011, Ray was constantly accusing Rosario of wasting his time, poisoning him and breaking his things, always demanding money in return for his alleged betrayal, Rosario said.
Rosario said he was completely under Ray’s spell. Rosario was convinced he was part of a plot to destroy Ray that involved Ray’s former best friend, exNYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, according to testimony.
Ray was best man at Kerik’s 1998 wedding, but later testified against the former top cop at a corruption trial.
Rosario said he actually believed he was poisoning Ray and other members of “The Ray Family” with ricin. Rosario wrote in journal entries — at Ray’s direction — that Kerik had visited Rosario’s family home in the Bronx along with other NYPD officers as part of the poisoning plot. Ray had Rosario send him photos of the journal entries, which were false, Rosario testified.
In another example of Ray’s complete command of the cult, Rosario testified that Ray made another acolyte perform a sex act on Rosario at a hotel in 2015. Ray allegedly stood beside the duo as it happened. The follower was working at the hotel as a prostitute and giving much of the proceeds to Ray, he testified.
In yet another example, Ray allegedly directed Rosario to have sex with Ray’s lieutenant, Pollok, on three occasions.
After Rosario escaped Ray’s clutches in 2015, he spent four years away from his tormentor, he testified.
But in 2019, he was contacted by reporters for New York magazine who were working on a story about Ray. After calling Ray to discuss the article, Rosario fell back into the cult.
Soon, Rosario had emptied his savings account, at Ray’s direction, he said.
It was not until federal prosecutors spoke to Rosario that he realized he had been duped for years. During his first meeting with the feds, prosecutors played a recording of Ray berating Rosario for 20 straight minutes.
“I remember thinking as I heard the recording that I wouldn’t ever treat anyone the way he was treating me,” Rosario said. “And that kind of led to the thought that maybe, just maybe, I was wrong about Larry. And that it was OK to think that.”