Jean-Philippe Rio-Py, Protzman, QAnon, Larry Ray, Legal
France 24: From a violent French sect to living on the streets of LA to the top of the music charts, pianist Riopy's incredible journey is the epitome of the idea that music can save your life.
"From a violent French sect to living on the streets of LA to the top of the music charts, pianist Riopy's incredible journey is the epitome of the idea that music can save your life.
The 38-year-old -- real name Jean-Philippe Rio-Py -- wrote the score for award-winning films "The Shape of Water" and "The Danish Girl", spent three weeks at the top of the US classical charts last month and is streamed by millions around the world via meditation and yoga apps.
But it has been a hard road to success, worthy of a fantastical film.
"I had some bad luck that transformed into an opportunity," he told AFP in Paris.
That is quite an understatement.
The "bad luck" was a sect in the Deux-Sevres region of western France, where he was raised by his mother along with two brothers and two sisters.
He faced beatings and other forms of psychological torment that left their mark in the form of an obsessive compulsive disorder and chronic depression.
The guru who ran the sect banned all music and television but the young Riopy found an abandoned piano and was able to teach himself to play.
"To say that music saved me is a cliche, but it's true," he told AFP.
"They would put me on a chair and tell me: 'Don't move'. It lasted hours and hours. I loved to make up rhythms in my head that I later transferred onto the keyboard."
'The nightmare continued'
Today, Riopy does not like to discuss the details of the sect, but he fled home at 18 and had no contact with his mother for the next 17 years."
People are losing their family to the QAnon offshoot that's convinced JFK and his son are about to return from the dead.
" ... For the families of those still under Protzman's influence, the increasingly cultic nature of the group's behavior is worrying. The family of one group member reported that Protzman's followers were drinking a mixture that included industrial bleach out of a communal bowl as part of a ritual. They have also traveled to Waco, near where the Branch Davidian compound at Mount Carmel once stood.
And Protzman himself has become increasingly dictatorial when speaking to his followers. In recent days, during audio chats on his Telegram channel he has berated those who dared to interrupt him while he was speaking, kicking followers out of chat rooms, and insulting others.
This week he issued a set of directives telling his followers how to act around him when he is speaking, listing discussion topics that he will permit and those that are not allowed."
"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, in 2020, 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."
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