Survivors speak out after Larry Ray was found guilty on counts of sex trafficking, racketeering and forced labor, among others.
Like many who read it, Zach Heinzerling was stunned by a 2019 New York magazine article that exposed the bizarre, cult-like control asserted by an ex-convict named Larry Ray over a group primarily of Sarah Lawrence College students he met in 2010, when he became an unexpectedly permanent guest at his daughter’s on-campus housing.
The director was guided by “the desire to humanize a story and also provide a place for empathy for these individuals who I think after the article were kind of blamed in some way [by a] ‘How could you let this happen?’ response,” he said. “It seems so unthinkable that someone like Larry could have so much control over these bright, promising individuals.”
His entry point was one of the survivors, Daniel Levin, who in 2021 published a memoir about the experience — “Slonim Woods 9,” the number of the campus apartment he shared with other students who would come under Ray’s command — had reached out to Heinzerling in the article’s wake. Heinzerling relied on archival videos and audio recordings from his subjects, including Ray, whom the filmmaker met with before he was indicted, as well as material made public as evidence in the trial. “Most traumatic narcissists are very interested in telling you their side of things,” said Heinzerling, whose work with Beyoncé on the 2013 web series “Self-Titled” appealed to Ray’s vanity, according to Rosario.
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