Slonim Woods 9: A Memoir

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There is a set of things if we're really just looking for red flags. We're talking about really familiar dynamics, but just taken to their most toxic extremes. What a cult is, it's many different things. It can be a group that's focused on a leader who's alive and that leader isn't accountable to a higher authority, but that can be what a political party is also, in its worst form. It could be just a group that's focused on bringing in new members, which sounds like a club, but if you push that too far, it's a cult. It could be a group that discourages dissent, but that could be the worst form of a government. Or it could claim an exalted status for itself and its leadership, which sounds like a religion, but again, taken to the extreme. Ray made it clear he hadpowerful friends. There he was in photos with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, with President George H.W. Bush. There was a letter somewhere, they were told, thanking Larry for singlehandedly ending the war in Kosovo. It takes a lot of courage to make yourself vulnerable again, to relive that experience writing about it.

It became important to me to tell my story so people see the effect someone like Larry can have on a person's life, but also to see the challenges and the struggles faced by the survivors in recovering from such abuse."

I had actually pushed for at least the footage of me experiencing abuse to be included, because I had lived for so long with this in private and had been so scared to share it with anyone," Levin said. "And, to me, having the footage exist just made me feel real and as if I wasn't crazy, these things actually had happened and I want people to see it. 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. Ray was best man at Kerik’s wedding, but there was a falling out: Ray’s testimony landed Kerik behind bars for corruption. Talia, loyal to her father, had declared her independence from Teresa, and spent time in a homeless shelter in Bridgewater, New Jersey, rather than live under Teresa's roof. I first spoke to Zach while I was still with Larry and Isabella before he was arrested," Rosario reflected. "My initial motivation in speaking to Zach was to help Larry. Once Larry was arrested, I was able to begin to process what had been happening to me and finally accept the reality of my situation. It brings me to the question of, how did I answer that question for myself at the time? How did I feel that what was going on was wrong enough that I had a clear enough answer that I could step away?

The narrative so often in stories of crime or abuse or cults is to look at the leader, to look at the perpetrator. You don't do that. You don't try to explain him or understand him or delve into the why of him. I'm sure that that was a choice.I mean that’s part of the challenge of memoir, of course, but this is an extreme example of that challenge. Claudia declined to participate in the series, which notes she left Larry in 2019 and has since reunited with her family. But Daniel recalls getting a call from her out of the blue after the story was published. Not only did he finally feel validated after living with that trauma on his own for so long, it made him feel "sane again," he says. "This happened. It did happen."

Ray, as previously mentioned, was in a relationship with both Rosario and Pollok, and the pair remained with him up until his arrest in February 2020. The process of trying to answer that question, to arrive at a clear definitive answer to who is this man, or even what are his intentions, was for me kind of a trap. If you spend your energy trying to figure out who your abuser is or if they're a good person, you're not leaving. The thing on the other side of the scale that outweighs everything is, he was the person who was hurting me and I didn't deserve that.

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I decided to continue to speak to Zach even after walking away from Larry and Isabella because I felt the need to set the record straight not only about the abuse I had suffered but also the narrative around me and how this happened to me.