Sarah Lawrence Cult Jury Hears From Key Witness: ‘I Became a Prostitute’

In journals, emails and movies, Claudia Drury cataloged the transgressions Lawrence V. Ray satisfied her she had dedicated.

Damaging Mr. Ray’s vacuum. Consuming all of his meals. Even poisoning him with cyanide.

In actuality, Ms. Drury now says, none of it occurred. However Mr. Ray demanded reparations anyway. And though she was brief on cash, she mentioned, Mr. Ray steered her towards a manner of getting “enjoyable” — whereas incomes money to pay him.

“I turned a prostitute,” Ms. Drury mentioned throughout testimony that ended on Friday in Federal District Court docket in Manhattan, the place Mr. Ray is being tried on 16 counts of prices that embody tax evasion and extortion. “It was Larry’s suggestion.”

Her testimony, coming close to the trial’s midpoint, is pivotal to the prosecution’s case, providing an inside account in help of among the most severe prices in opposition to him, intercourse trafficking and violent crime in support of racketeering.

Over a number of days, Ms. Drury added new particulars about how Mr. Ray, in response to prosecutors, moved right into a dormitory at Sarah Lawrence Faculty in 2010 and spent years manipulating and abusing college students he met there.

Ms. Drury, a type of college students, described how Mr. Ray exploited her at a time when she felt “anchorless and anxious.”

He gained her belief by pretending to be a mentor, Ms. Drury testified. Then, she mentioned, he turned abusive, pressuring her to confess to the phony infractions and utilizing her confessions to extract funds.

Mr. Ray was arrested in 2020 after he was the topic of a New York journal article.

In her testimony, Ms. Drury detailed how Mr. Ray had wielded energy over her and different impressionable college students at Sarah Lawrence, a non-public, liberal arts faculty in Westchester County, N.Y., simply north of New York Metropolis.

Ms. Drury described how Mr. Ray made her imagine she had dedicated crimes, alienated her from her dad and mom and groomed her for abuse. He first spoke about intercourse, she testified, then initiated sexual contact along with her and inspired her sexual contact with others.

Lastly, she labored for years as a prostitute, Ms. Drury testified, soliciting shoppers over the web and giving about $2.5 million in earnings to Mr. Ray.

She additionally testified that Mr. Ray turned enraged after she confided in a shopper about facets of her life. At one level, she mentioned, he threatened her with waterboarding and held a plastic bag over her head in a Manhattan lodge as she struggled to breathe.

“I used to be terrified,” she mentioned. “I used to be trembling.”

Mr. Ray’s attorneys have instructed {that a} group of storytelling college students, a few of whom have had psychological well being issues, had created a “implausible conspiracy” about him.

Beneath cross-examination, Ms. Drury acknowledged that she had a historical past of embellishing anecdotes and she or he mentioned she had fabricated an in depth account of being accosted on the road by mysterious males with a message from Mr. Ray’s onetime pal, Bernard B. Kerik, a former New York police commissioner.

Ms. Drury entered Mr. Ray’s orbit after he appeared on the Sarah Lawrence dormitory the place his daughter, Talia Ray, lived. He had not too long ago accomplished a state jail time period in New Jersey stemming from a toddler custody dispute.

On the dormitory, Mr. Ray regaled Ms. Drury and the opposite roommates with tales of intrigue. She testified that she realized of his time within the navy and his function within the downfall of Mr. Kerik, who was nominated for a high federal job however finally pleaded responsible to prices of tax fraud and accepting free work from a contractor suspected of being tied to the mob.

Mr. Ray had a “very magnetic and charismatic sort of persona,” Ms. Drury testified, including that she believed that he had uncovered a plot to “rip up the Structure and damage America.”

He described a philosophy he had helped create known as “Quest for Potential” and in contrast himself to the Roman emperor and thinker Marcus Aurelius, Ms. Drury mentioned. She started to look upon him as a “confidant” who may assist enhance her life.

However whilst he was providing counsel, he was additionally displaying conspiratorial tendencies, Ms. Drury testified. She mentioned Mr. Ray believed that Mr. Kerik and others had been decided to hurt him.

In summer time 2011, she mentioned, she and different college students ceaselessly stayed at Mr. Ray’s residence on Manhattan’s Higher East Facet, the place he offered so-called remedy classes meant to make them “extra developed folks.”

Mr. Ray additionally introduced up intercourse, Ms. Drury testified, speaking about “swing golf equipment” and generally touching her sexually.

He urged her to have intercourse with a fellow scholar and with a salesman who visited the residence, Ms. Drury testified, including that in response to Mr. Ray, “being very open and uninhibited” confirmed a “larger stage of non-public improvement and self-comfort and honesty.”

On the similar time, he started making accusations.

He mentioned the scholars had been damaging his property, hiding his possessions and throwing out vital paperwork. Hourslong interrogations adopted, Ms. Drury mentioned, with Mr. Ray quizzing the scholars till he gained a confession. He additionally threatened the scholars, she mentioned, and generally lashed out violently.

Ms. Drury mentioned she admitted to issues she had not finished partly as a result of Mr. Ray insisted that she had and partly as a result of the opposite college students had been confessing to imagined infractions.

“It was very straightforward for me to be like, effectively, perhaps I did harm that,” she testified. “As soon as I kind of began confessing to these issues, each was like additional proof of all of the others.”

Ms. Drury finally confessed to poisoning Mr. Ray. In a video he created, which was launched as proof, he will be heard asking Ms. Drury for particulars. She mentioned she had put “mercury, cyanide and arsenic” in his meals and on his toothbrush.

Mr. Ray mentioned he may ship her to jail, Ms. Drury testified, and made her learn Solzhenitsyn’s “The Gulag Archipelago” so she would know what was forward.

A recorded telephone dialog from 2012, additionally launched as proof, captured Mr. Ray prompting Ms. Drury as she advised her mom that she fantasized about pushing her from a window and strangling her father and that she needed to go to a hospital.

Ms. Drury testified that it was Mr. Ray who first instructed she needed to hurt her dad and mom and that she had not consciously considered doing so. Whereas she was hospitalized, she added, he advised her that her dad and mom needed to harm her and “distort the reality.” She mentioned her relationship along with her dad and mom worsened till she misplaced contact with them solely.

“Larry would inform me basically that they had been making an attempt to hold me out to dry,” she testified. “I turned actually paranoid towards them.”

In 2014, Ms. Drury testified, she started working at intercourse golf equipment at Mr. Ray’s suggestion. He inspired her to have intercourse with a cabdriver in lieu of paying a fare and to have intercourse with a stranger in Central Park, she added. She additionally mentioned he was “impressed” after she advised him she had let a person run a knife over her physique and strike her with a heavy object throughout sexual actions.

All of the whereas, Ms. Drury testified, she was scared that she would go to jail if she didn’t give Mr. Ray cash he mentioned she owed him as compensation for hurt she had brought about him, particularly the supposed poisonings. Mr. Ray advised her that prostitution could be “enjoyable” and a “sexual rush,” she mentioned.

Ms. Drury mentioned she was a prostitute from early 2015 till spring 2019, residing in lodges, seeing as much as 5 males a day, seven days every week, and charging them as much as $2,000 for an hour. She testified that she gave the cash to Mr. Ray and Isabella Pollok, a former Sarah Lawrence roommate who prosecutors say turned Mr. Ray’s “trusted lieutenant” and who has been charged with conspiring with him to commit intercourse trafficking, extortion and racketeering.

“I felt immense strain from Larry to get cash,” Ms. Drury testified, including that she additionally needed to get “off my soul” that she had behaved towards him in an “unforgivable” manner.

In late 2018, Ms. Drury mentioned, Mr. Ray confirmed up at a Midtown lodge the place she was staying, ordered her to take away her garments after which handcuffed her to a chair. Over about seven hours, she mentioned, he positioned a pillow over her face, choked her with a collar and leash and lined her head with a plastic bag, at one level saying: “I’m going to kill you.”

That, she testified, was a turning level.

“I used to be scared for my life,” she mentioned. “I used to be more and more anxious over whether or not he was truly who I assumed he was.”

She mentioned she had fled New York about six months after the encounter. She didn’t see or communicate with Mr. Ray once more.