NEW YORK — The trial of accused Sarah Lawrence College sex cult leader Lawrence Ray descended into chaos Tuesday as the alleged abuser was wheeled out of the courthouse on a stretcher — and the Justice Department mistakenly released a list of well-heeled johns who paid to have sex with one of the leader’s followers.
Ray, 62, was put in an ambulance outside Manhattan Federal Court for the second time. His eyes were rolled back in his head and mouth agape. Just last week, Ray was hospitalized after his lawyers said he suffered a seizure.
While Ray was rushed to the hospital, the feds faced a different type of emergency. A trial exhibit discussed in court but not shown publicly, was accidentally uploaded to a database for reporters. The exhibit was a list, compiled by Ray’s follower Claudia Drury in 2018, of men she slept with in exchange for money.
Drury, 31, has testified she earned $2.5 million working as a prostitute for years while in Ray’s small cult of Sarah Lawrence students and other young adults. She said that Ray forced her to work as a prostitute to repay bogus debts he convinced her she owed.
The New York Daily News has a copy of the list, but is not publishing the names of 112 alleged clients. They appear to be a retired New York judge and a hedge fund manager, among many others.
“This file was inadvertently loaded to the U.S. v. Ray file share. Please do not reproduce, share, or use this exhibit in any way,” the Southern District of New York wrote in an email to reporters Tuesday morning.
Drury was in the midst of her testimony when Judge Lewis Liman called for an abrupt break and closed the courtroom around 12:30 p.m.
She had been testifying about the four years during which she worked as a prostitute and turned over the “extreme majority” of her proceeds to Ray.
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