NY Post
March 18, 2022
The woman who Larry Ray allegedly forced into prostitution told jurors at his Manhattan federal court trial Friday that she turned over to the accused sex cult leader some $2.5 million paid by johns – and detailed the physical and mental abuse he allegedly subjected her to for years.
Claudia Drury, who testified under her real name, briefly addressed the four years she worked as a prostitute at the direction of Ray while being questioned by prosecutor Danielle Sassoon.
The former Sarah Lawrence College student said she worked seven days a week, meeting up to five johns a day at New York City hotels while she worked as a prostitute for Ray and his alleged cohort, Isabella Pollok.
Drury also detailed the physical abuse Ray subjected to her.
“He slapped me in the face so hard I fell over. Pulled my hair. Strangled me. Suffocated me. Hit me,” she said.
Ray also repeatedly threatened her, she testified, at one time suggesting he could have her kidnapped and sent to the Middle East.
“He threatened to put me in jail numerous times. He threatened to kill me on a memorable occasion. He threatened to cut my face. He threatened to have me abducted and dropped in the Middle East. He threatened to blackmail people I knew,” Drury said.
Drury fell under Ray’s control after meeting him in 2010 at her dorm room while she was a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College in Westchester County.
Ray moved into the building, where his daughter, Talia, lived after getting out of prison in an unrelated case that fall.
Soon, he began drawing in a group of his daughter’s friends, wowing them with fantastical tales of hobnobbing with political leaders and engaging in military operations in Eastern Europe.
In the summer of 2011, a group of the students moved into a one-bedroom apartment where Ray was staying on the Upper East Side. There, prosecutors allege, his abuse of the students and the level of control he had over them increased.
At the apartment, Drury said Ray at times steered conversations toward sex, describing times he had visited sex clubs and engaged in sex acts with others in front of a group of people.
One night at the apartment, Drury was sleeping on an air mattress in the living room when Ray walked over, stood above her and fondled himself under his pants as he talked about how he could make her orgasm.
He then suggested she and another Sarah Lawrence student who was living at the apartment, Dan Levin, have sex, Drury testified.
“When he left, we did,” she said.
On another occasion, Ray told Drury to masturbate on a couch in the living room of the apartment while he was in the room next door.
“He wanted me to finish and wanted me to be very loud,” she testified.
Ray also asserted mental control over Drury, she testified, and once encouraged her to force her parents to hospitalize her.
Prosecutors played a disturbing audio clip of a recorded phone conversation between Drury and Ray, in which he coaches her to tell her parents that she’s been fantasizing about stabbing her friend and killing both of them.
“Tell her you want to go to the hospital,” Ray tells Drury on the call as she speaks to her mother, according to the recording.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/18/larry-ray-victim-details-abuse-inflicted-by-sarah-lawrence-cult-leader/
No comments:
Post a Comment