FBI

The arrest of the Sarah Lawrence Students Cult was in the papers this week. 

Former and current members, do the bolded instances from the indictment sound familiar to you and your experience? 

"From in or about 2010 through the present, LAWRENCE RAY, a/k/a “Lawrence Grecco,” the defendant, subjected a group of college students and other victims to sexual and psychological manipulation and physical abuse.  RAY’s tactics included sleep deprivation, psychological and sexual humiliation, verbal abuse, threats of physical violence, physical violence, threats of criminal legal action, alienating the victims from their families, and exploiting the victims’ mental health vulnerabilities. 

Through this manipulation and abuse, RAY extracted false confessions from the victims to causing purported damages to RAY and his family and associates, and then extorted payment for those purported damages through several means.  The victims made payments to RAY by draining their parents’ savings, opening credit lines, soliciting contributions from acquaintances, selling real estate ownership, and at RAY’s direction, performing unpaid labor for RAY and earning money through prostitution. 

In addition, as alleged, RAY forced three female victims to perform unpaid labor on a family member’s property in North Carolina.  Through a course of psychological and physical abuse, RAY forced these three victims to do extensive physical labor, sometimes in the middle of the night, for no pay."