Accused Sarah Lawrence sex cult leader Lawrence Ray to face trial

The trial of Lawrence Ray, the accused sex cult leader charged with preying on his daughter’s classmates at Sarah Lawrence College and pimping out one of the victims, gets underway in Manhattan Tuesday.

Jury selection in the case is scheduled to begin Tuesday and prosecutors and Ray’s defense team are expected to deliver opening arguments Wednesday, a spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said. 

Ray, a 62-year-old former Wall Street trader and onetime friend of ex-NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, landed on the feds’ radar after a lengthy 2019 New York Magazine story that revealed his alleged abuse and manipulation of a group of Sarah Lawrence students. 

The accused sicko moved into his daughter’s dorm room on the leafy Yonkers campus in 2010, days after being sprung from prison after serving time for a securities fraud conviction. 

He soon began to assert control over a number of the students, luring them under his thumb with fantastical tales about his life and providing “therapy” sessions to manipulate them, according to the indictment against him and the New York Magazine story.

Soon after, he convinced five of the students to move in with him in a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, where his abuse of the students allegedly turned physical. 

For nearly the next 10 years, Ray extorted money out of the students after he accused them of poisoning him and damaging things that he owned. 

To pull off the scheme, Ray and his co-conspirator, former Sarah Lawrence student Isabella Pollok, video recorded the students making false confessions in which they claimed to have poisoned the accused madman, according to prosecutors.

Pollok, a former roommate of Ray’s daughter, was indicted for her alleged role in the scheme, but will face a separate trial scheduled for the summer. 

Ray forced one of the students, identified by prosecutors as “Female Victim-1,” into prostitution and collected “millions” of dollars in proceeds, according to the indictment against him. 

In one instance in 2018, Ray allegedly attacked the victim in a Midtown hotel room, holding a plastic bag over her head and “interfering with her ability to breathe,” the feds charge.

Details about how Ray was able to obtain such a huge profit from the victim have not been released, but prosecutors intend to introduce evidence about the forced prostitution at trial, according to recent court filings. 

Ray was arrested in 2020 at his home in Piscataway, NJ.

On Sunday, prosecutors wrote to Judge Lewis Liman, asking that certain exhibits that document “sexually explicit, violent, or degrading circumstances” be filed under seal during the trial.

The exhibits include “Backpage advertisements, containing explicit photographs, Text messages with sexually explicit photographs and nude photographs,” according to prosecutors. 

Ray faces a 17-count indictment charging him with racketeering, sex trafficking and conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, he faces life in prison.