NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors urged a jury Monday to finally hold Sarah Lawrence College sex cult leader Lawrence Ray accountable for his 10-year reign as the sick patriarch of “The Ray Family,” saying his verbal, physical and sexual abuse of young acolytes was part of a master plan to extract money from shell-shocked victims.
The feds argued in closing statements that Ray, 62, along with his daughter Talia and his trusted lieutenant Isabella Pollok, ran a criminal enterprise that used sex trafficking, extortion and assault to maintain complete control over its members. Ray met many of the victims through his daughter when she was a student at the idyllic Bronxville college.
“You heard how he brutalized them with a hammer, with pliers, with punches, with a plastic bag, with vicious abuse, with forced labor,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Bracewell. “You heard how he took their money again and again.”
