Slonim Woods 9
A Memoir
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4.4 • 24 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
An “extraordinary” (Nylon) firsthand account of the creation of a modern cult and the costs paid by its young victims: a group of college roommates
“Intense . . . [a tale] of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable.”—Salon
The inspiration for the Hulu docuseries Stolen Youth, directed by Zach Heinzerling and co-produced by Daniel Barban Levin
In September 2010, at the beginning of the academic year at Sarah Lawrence College, a sophomore named Talia Ray asked her roommates if her father could stay with them for a while. No one objected. Her father, Larry Ray, was just released from prison, having spent three years behind bars after a conviction during a bitter custody dispute.
Larry Ray arrived at the dorm, a communal house called Slonim Woods 9, and stayed for the whole year. Over the course of innumerable counseling sessions and “family meetings,” the intense and forceful Ray convinced his daughter’s friends that he alone could help them “achieve clarity.” Eventually, Ray and the students moved into a small Manhattan apartment, beginning years of manipulation and abuse, as Ray tightened his control over his young charges through blackmail, extortion, and ritualized humiliation. After a decade of secrecy, Larry Ray was finally indicted on charges of extortion, sex trafficking, forced labor, and money laundering.
Daniel Barban Levin was one of the original residents of Slonim Woods 9. Beginning the moment Daniel set foot on Sarah Lawrence’s idyllic campus and spanning the two years he spent in the grip of a megalomaniac, this brave, lyrical, and redemptive memoir reveals how a group of friends were led from college to a cult without the world even noticing.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Poet Levin debuts with a chilling account of the two years he spent living as part of a cult. Writing in eloquent prose, he describes how such a thing can happen, and why, as he puts it, "The alarms kept screaming, and we ignored them." Levin's freshman year at Sarah Lawrence College was like any other student's, until he met Larry Ray, his classmate Talia's father, in 2010. Ray lived with his daughter and her friends at their communal dorm, and, claiming to be a Defense Intelligence Agency operative, he ingratiated his way into the group first with relationship advice, and then guilt and intimidation. "You make your world what it is," he tells Levin, "closed, small, weak, empty, bleak, barren... they don't see it, but I see it." Gripped by fear, the friends were eventually subjected to sexual and physical violence, and explicit torture, all by Ray. After two years, Levin finally found the strength to leave, seek therapy, and, with the encouragement of a friend, begin to write his story. (Ray currently awaits trial on federal charges of, among other things, conspiracy, extortion, and sex trafficking.) It's tragic, but it's also a powerful portrayal of a young man's ability to emerge whole from an experience intended to break him. As dark as it is, there's real beauty in this story.
