Silke Jasso
Lawrence Ray, who is accused of sexually, psychologically, and emotionally manipulating his daughter’s classmates at Sarah Lawrence College, was sentenced to six decades in prison by a federal judge in Manhattan. The judge went on to call Ray’s conduct “sadism, pure and simple.”
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Judge Lewis Limam called the man an evil genius and “particularly heinous,” noting how he manipulated college students who didn’t have a way out of his cruel and sophisticated actions. “Having gained control of their minds and bodies, he forced them to do his bidding,” Liman stated. “He sought to take every bit of light from his victims’ lives.”
Ray reportedly held so-called therapy sessions with Sarah Lawrence College students after he had moved into his daughter’s on-campus housing back in 2010. Ray had moved in after he was released from a prison sentence for security fraud. He went on to move into a one-bedroom apartment with several of the roommates in 2011.
The man had presented himself as a father figure to the students learning “intimate detail about their private lives, vulnerabilities, and mental health struggles under the pretense of helping them” during those said sessions, according to the indictment.
Lawrence Ray Sentenced to 60 Years
The 63-year-old was convicted last April of a total of 17 counts, including extortion, forced labor, and sex trafficking. A friend of the victim, Claudia Drury, was able to read at the trial, describing the incident as “unremitting sadistic torture.”
“Larry forced me to abject desperation,” Drury’s statement said. She went on to describe Ray as “a malevolent, deceitful shadow of a man” who had forced her into prostitution, threatened her, extorted her and beat her. “ It was as if he was experimenting on our very souls.”
Drury’s statement went on to describe an instance when Ray had “stripped me naked, bound me to a chair and suffocated me with a plastic bag over and over again until I begged for my life.”
Another victim, Daniel Levin, stated Ray had tortured him and his friends telling a judge how Ray brandished a knife over him while instructing another to line the bathtub with plastic in order to catch the blood. He also stated Ray hit him with a sledgehammer while pulling his tongue with pliers.
“My friend’s dad moved into my dorm and what followed were years of abuse — psychological, physical, sexual,” Levin stated. “I can never live a life where this didn’t happen.”
Another victim, Santos Rosario, stated that a decade of “ absolute misery” followed his meeting of Ray back in 2010. He told the judge that he “contemplated suicide” after Ray had physically abused, degraded and blackmailed him.
“He took 10 years of my life away from me. All I know is I wish I had never met him,” Rosario stated. According to prosecutors, Ray’s capacity for “unspeakable cruelty” was “unceasing,” and requested life in prison. Defense attorney, Marne Lenox, ought no more than 15 years.
“Mr. Ray has been punished and he will continue to be punished,” Lenox stated citing Ray’s three years of incarceration since his arrest back in February 2020 and the recent death of his father, stepmother, and stepfather. “ Today, there is no one,” Lennox stated, noting the absence of supporters in the courtroom. Through a brief statement to the court, he didn’t address the crimes or his victims but rather focused instead on his health.
“It’s frightening to feel this bad,” Ray Stated after describing ringing in his ears, lessons, sleeplessness, as well as other conditions that he said were “ progressively worse.”
The judge went on to express doubt about his health claims, and just said despite his age “ there was no reason to believe Mr. Ray what age out of criminal behavior.”
