The first thing I should say -- I was trying to hide and protect myself for years. I got out of this and described the process of extricating myself in the book, but part of how that happened was I had to try to lead these people to believe that I wasn’t turning against them because I knew what it looked like when someone became the enemy. I had to sort of slink away and hope that no one would follow me.

Ray's crimes first came to light in a report from The Cut, of New York Magazine, which prompted authorities to investigate the allegations made in it of his abuse. Talia Ray has also been investigated as a co-conspirator of her father, but no charges have been brought against her. She added: "In the end, it is possible to heal from this kind of trauma and there is help. Zach provided that safe space in the documentary and I also had the support of my therapists, social workers, case workers and attorneys along the way. But Ray would explode at the smallest perceived betrayal, like the time one of his kitchen pans had a mysterious scratch. Dan Levin, one of the survivors of Larry Ray, was also one of the main sources for the New York Magazine article, which catalyzed the investigation into Ray’s activities. At the end of 2019, Levin reached out to the Emmy Award-winning director Zachary Heinzerling about making a documentary from the perspective of the survivors.

Possibly the most haunting thing about what happened to Daniel Levin and his friends was how eerily recognizable their lives were when they ended up under the thumb of Larry Ray. So, I think we need to expand that definition a little bit, and to maybe have a broader conversation about power and about men like this, who maybe don't have a bunch of 19-year-olds move into their apartment and abuse them but who find other scenarios in which it's possible to exert control over people, to gaslight and, in some cases, to abuse them. I think that conversation has been happening for a long time, but I'd like to maybe expand it to include experiences like mine." This unsettling memoir depicts college friends in thrall to one student’s devious, domineering father. This is a weird question, but are you familiar with EMDR therapy at all? (EMDR therapy, or Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing therapy, is a psychotherapy method that helps people recover from trauma.) Kerik, who was close enough with Larry at one point to have him as best man at his wedding, denied being involved in any plot against him, telling New York in 2019, "Larry Ray is a psychotic con man who has victimized every friend he's ever had. It's been close to 20 years since I last heard from him, yet his reign of terror continues."

Powerful. . . . A poetic and intimate memoir of a harrowing ordeal. Any reader interested in the workings of cults or the experiences of people in cults will find this book worthwhile.” — Library Journal From the Publisher Levin follows the story to the Upper East Side apartment where, federal prosecutors say, Ray’s criminal enterprise took shape, where Ray held a knife to Levin's throat, and humiliated him psychologically and sexually. She and I sat down and I explained the whole thing to her and it was as if a mirror was held up. I started to really see what had happened to me and slowly from there, work to be able to call it what it had been, which was a cult. At the time, I had no frame of reference because most people I think have a very specific definition of what cult is. That was years before I started writing this book. But I started writing from then, trying to write it in poetry, trying to figure out how to make it make sense to other people, all the while also trying to hide from the people I thought might come after me and try to hurt me if I said something bad about them. And now we’re here, talking to you. With fascinating detail, Slonim Woods 9 takes us on a tour of the lower depths of human vulnerability and manipulation. Levin’s vivid storytelling and poetic sense make it a great read, without ever upstaging its commitment to the slippery, open-ended process of self-discovery and healing.” —Amy Gerstler, author of Scattered at Sea Sarah Lawrence — where the unofficial slogan is "We're different. So are you"— revels in a unique pedagogical pedigree, one that suggests there are no clear answers and that there's a process of exploring and becoming. That's a scary place to be, for someone seeking certainty, Levin said.When the New York Magazine article came out — you had a quote that really stood out to me. That article was so big and led to Larry being arrested and I’m wondering how the article affected your life? Where were you in the process of writing this book when that came out? All these years later, Levin has learned to frame what happened to him, to look at it, not as something that defines him, but as something that happened to him.

But what does it mean to be suicidal? In the scene you mention, I’m on the roof of the building we lived in (forty-five floors up). I didn’t go up there with the intention of jumping off. I just wanted to see the view. I climbed all the way onto the water tower and lay on a roof that sloped toward the empty air, the street below. If I really wanted to die, it would have been incredibly easy in that moment. It almost didn’t matter if I wanted to or not—what mattered was that I didn’t do it.Larry had been acting as if he was having to constantly keep a short leash on all of us, lest we jump in front of a bus or something. Here I was, one step from a 450-foot drop, the roof literally pitching me forward, and I wasn’t doing it. I didn’t even really want to do it. That was a story someone else had been telling about me that wasn’t true. So, the house of cards began to crumble. If I wasn't constantly at risk of spontaneous suicide, not only did that mean Larry was wrong, it also meant that I could choose a different life for myself. And now, one of the former members of the group, Daniel Barban Levin, has written his account of what went on during those tumultuous, painful years of his young adulthood. It's an intense tale of coercion, humiliation, gaslighting and physical torment. It's also one of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable. Salon spoke to Barban Levin recently via Zoom about writing his way to a new narrative, when he knew he had to walk away, why nobody sets out to join a cult — and what really happened at Slonim Woods 9, the name of a dormitory on Sarah Lawrence's campus from which Barban Levin took his memoir title. Reflecting on the result of the court case, Rosario said: "I felt validated and vindicated when I heard the judge announce Larry's sentence. The indictment reads like something out of a made-for-TV movie. But it was all too real. The case against Larry Ray was built on eyewitness testimony and riveting, disturbing, disgusting details. Dan Levin wrote the book on the Larry Ray case

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 Daniel Barban Levin’s courageous and honest memoir exposes the evil nature of manipulation and the near impossibility of escape, and his writing reminds us that honesty is the only tool to destroy these monsters. Levin offers us a way out, but only if we have the courage to follow him. This is an extraordinary story of entrapment, determination, and escape.” —Eric Fair, author of Consequence