Helen Archer | On 21, Feb 2023

Cults loom large in the American psyche. The People’s Temple, the Manson Family, Heaven’s Gate, the Branch Davidians, NXIVM – all tap into uncertainty and vulnerabilities, promising answers on how to make meaning in a world that might otherwise seem meaningless. Larry Ray’s “cult” was small and nameless, but it nonetheless wreaked cataclysmic havoc in the lives of its young victims.

The story became a viral hit when it was featured in a 2019 New York magazine article by journalists Ezra Marcus and James D Walsh. Award-winning documentarian Zach Heinzerling (whose previous work includes Cutie and the Boxer) was contacted by one of the article’s subjects, Dan Levin, who wanted the survivors’ voices to be heard – resulting in this powerful, harrowing, three-part examination of life inside (and, ultimately, outside) the control of a master brainwasher.

Anyone with any interest in the topic probably already knows enough about the self-appointed leaders of such groups – manipulative narcissists who indoctrinate others to boost their own Messiah complex, with devastating consequences for their followers. What is less examined, however, is the programming and deprogramming process of those who fall into their orbit. This is where Stolen Youth excels – by pulling focus on those who were in the thrall of Larry Ray, until, somehow, they managed to break off the shackles of his control.

The documentary begins as a group of eight sophomore students moved into a dorm house on the large, wooded campus of the New York liberal arts college, Sarah Lawrence, in 2010. Included in that number was Talia Ray, Larry’s daughter, who laid the groundwork for her father’s arrival into their lives, positioning him as both a hero and a victim of a far-reaching conspiracy, which had seen him imprisoned by his many powerful enemies – chief among them Bernie Kerik, a former commissioner of police. Ray moved into his daughter’s campus house after being released from jail in 2010, and he inveigled his way into the roommates’ lives through stories of his days in the Marines (unbeknownst to them, he only served 19 days before being dishonourably discharged) and his connections to the CIA, as well as more mundane things like keeping their house clean and treating them to steak dinners. Soon, though, Ray started pulling them aside, spending one-on-one time with them, discovering their various vulnerabilities, with which he could exploit them, and gradually isolating them from friends and family so that he was the centre of their world.

Most of those who lived in the house – including Santos Rosario, Dan Levin, Isabella Pollok and Claudia Drury – would go on to share a one-bedroom apartment in New York with Ray during their holidays, and some would stay there for the remainder of their time at college, joined later by Santos’ two sisters, Yalitza and Felicia. The first two episodes relay their time under Ray’s dominance, which includes extraordinary, disturbing footage – like Keith Raniere, Ray kept both audio and video recordings of much of his abuse – as they are verbally harangued and physically assaulted. Ray convinced them that they owed him vast sums of money for minor infractions; he would have them up all night, feeding them Adderall as they took part in group “interrogations”, during which time he would beat them with hammers, hold their tongues with wrenches, and otherwise torture them, both physically and mentally. He was, too, coercing them to experiment sexually with each other and with him.

The third episode represents a marked change of pace. By then, Ray is in prison, facing the charges that would ultimately see him jailed for 60 years, leaving only Isabella and Felicia still loyal. The episode begins with Felicia still proclaiming her love for the man she viewed as her husband, but, through the course of the hour-long episode, she somehow manages to gain back her intellectual and emotional independence and break free of Ray’s clutches.

It is intensely emotional viewing, as Felicia, who had managed to get full medical scholarships into Harvard and Columbia – and was weeks away from completing her psychology residency in LA when she met Ray – gradually realises all she has lost to this man. Slowly, she reconnects with her working-class Dominican parents, as well as the two siblings who had likewise shut themselves off from each other following their experiences at the hands of Ray. While some of the most harrowing footage of the previous episode captures her in full paranoid breakdown mode, screaming and collapsing on the floor as Ray’s mental and emotional abuse worked its way through her system, it is a salve to see her emerging from the near decade-long quagmire she had been engulfed in.

It is a hopeful note to end on, even though the viewer, like the documentary subjects, knows that the damage Larry Ray inflicted on their lives is irrevocable. It is, too, an unforgettable reminder that no one is impervious to exploitation. Stolen Youth is not just a peerless documentary but a potential teaching tool, about the nature of of coercive control, manipulation, abuse and the great strength it takes to escape, mentally and physically. It serves as both a warning and a testament to those who survived it.

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