Stolen Youth review: Hulu's Sarah Lawrence cult documentary is tough to watch
"Sarah Lawrence sex cult" screamed the headlines when Larry Ray — the sinister con artist who abused a group of his daughter's friends for over a decade — was sentenced to 60 years in prison last month. Stolen Youth, the new Hulu documentary about the young adults Ray tormented, proves how woefully reductive that sensationalistic phrase really is. The three-part series from director Zach Heinzerling (McCartney 3, 2, 1) uses Ray's own recordings and firsthand accounts from his survivors to explore, often in agonizing detail, the devastating emotional damage he left behind.
Thirteen years ago, Larry Ray — newly released from prison after a child custody dispute — came to crash with his daughter, Talia, in her dorm at Sarah Lawrence College in New York. He regaled Talia's roommates with exciting (though often exaggerated) stories of his life in the military and high stakes work as a government agent. "I thought it was the coolest thing ever," admits Santos Rosario, Talia's boyfriend at the time.
Over the next few months, he became a father figure and mentor to the sophomores; they were sensitive young adults trying to find their way into adulthood, and Larry Ray was more than happy to draw them a map. Eventually, he convinced several of the students — including Daniel Levin, Isabella Pollack, Santos and eventually his sisters, Felicia and Yalitza Rosario — to move into his Upper East Side sublet. That's when the cult tactics began in earnest: Love bombing, isolation, food and sleep deprivation, coerced confessions, physical punishment, and so on.
Hulu Felicia Rosario and Larry Ray
Ray insisted on recording everything, and Stolen Youth weaves in those audio and video recordings effectively to illustrate how his hold over the students intensified. The vibe shifts gradually from home-movies collegial to interrogation-room tense, as Ray begins haranguing students about their many alleged crimes against him — everything from scratching his stainless steel pan to poisoning him with mercury. Exhausted, stressed, and starting to doubt their own memories, Ray's targets offer their "confessions" on tape. ("Getting me scared enough, tired enough, and hungry enough — I would just make something up," admits Santos.)
Even more harrowing than the videos of actual violence — Ray striking Levin in the stomach with a hammer or throwing a hysterical Felicia to the ground and pinning her down with his knee — are the present-day interviews with the victims. Now in their early 30s and physically free from Ray's control, the former students recount their ordeal with a kind of shellshocked gravity, all clearly still struggling to understand how a trusted adult could have exploited them with such unfathomable cruelty. (Claudia Drury, who Ray coerced into prostitution, chose not to participate in the series.)
Documentaries about cults are never breezy affairs, but Stolen Youth is a particularly tough watch. In addition to showing the students enduring hard labor, emotional torment, and physical punishment, the archival footage also offers a distressing and vivid picture of their mental and emotional deterioration. Episode 2, "Truth Wins," is especially brutal, as Felicia — who abandoned her medical residency as a result of Ray's lies and intimidation — suffers an ongoing psychological breakdown while Larry's camera rolls.
What keeps Stolen Youth from being unbearably grim is its final hour, "Larryland," which follows Isabella Pollack, and Felicia and Yalitza in the aftermath of Ray's 2020 arrest. Heinzerling and his team chronicle the women as they attempt to navigate their new existence without the man who controlled them for 10 years. We see Felicia and Yalitza begin the grueling process of untangling their truth from Ray's tenacious web of lies. In one stunning moment, Felicia stops herself mid-memory, realizing that she's about to recite Ray's "twisted" version of the story rather than the facts. "I have no idea what's true," she admits. But she is not defeated, and watching the Rosario siblings piece their shattered family back together is a needed dose of hope amidst so much tragedy. Grade: B
Stolen Youth premieres Thursday, Feb. 9 on Hulu.
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