According to court testimony, a former convicted father accused of running a sex cult in a Sarah Lawrence College dorm once forced a brother and sister to wear diapers as punishment for acting like children.
Santos Rosario testified on Monday in Manhattan Federal Court that Lawrence Ray, accused in a high-profile sex trafficking trial that began last week, abused him and his two sisters, Felicia and Yalicia.
Ray, 60, pleaded not guilty to 17 counts, including sex trafficking, extortion, money laundering, violent crimes in aid of a racket, conspiracy to racket and forced labor in a bizarre case that began over a decade ago.
Santos testified about the diaper incident after a prosecutor picked it up by asking a witness what happened between him and Ray before he fled the cult in 2015.
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Witness Santos Rosario (left) testified at the federal sex trafficking trial of suspected sex cult leader Lawrence Wray (right). Santos is pictured in the witness position on 11 March.
Santos claimed that Ray once had his “lieutenant” put diapers on him and one of his sisters because they were acting like children.
Santos was introduced to Ray in 2010 by his daughter Talia (left), whom he was dating at the time.
Ray, 60, faces charges of sex trafficking, extortion, money laundering, violent crimes with intent to extort, conspiracy to racketeering and forced labor.
“I don’t remember the context or what we were accused of this time. But Larry said my sister and I were acting like children and he made Isabella put diapers on us,” Santos said, referring to the alleged “lieutenant” and Ray’s accomplice Isabella Pollock, according to the New York Post.
Santos said Ray had him and sister Felicia sit in his Upper East Side apartment in Manhattan wearing nothing but diapers.
“We just waited there until Larry said we could take them off. Santos told the court, according to the New York Daily News.
After this incident, Rosario left the cult of which he had been a member for five years and moved into a homeless shelter instead of continuing to be subjected to Ray’s increasingly horrifying “interrogations”.
“I couldn’t take it anymore,” Santos said of the alleged abuse. “These interrogations with Larry got scarier and longer. And I couldn’t articulate at the time, but I was horrified to be there. So I was just looking for an opportunity to escape.”
Santos is pictured with Ray’s daughter, Talia, in this photo, which was presented as evidence by the prosecution.
An exhibit seen in court shows Santos’ face after repeatedly hitting himself on Ray’s orders.
Santos (left) claimed that Ray forced him to have sex with his “lieutenant” Isabelle Pollock (right) three times.
Santos also claimed that Ray once forced Claudia Drury (pictured) to have sexual intercourse with him while the alleged cult leader sat by and watched.
Santos was introduced to Ray in 2010 by his daughter Talia, whom he was dating at the time. He soon found himself under Ray’s control along with his two sisters.
Santos testified that Ray hit him with a hammer, held a knife to his genitals, urged him to commit suicide, and called him a “scumbag” and “garbage”.
Prosecutors showed the jury a video of Santos repeatedly punching himself in the face at Ray’s direction.
The suspected sex cult leader also allegedly accused Santos of poisoning him and damaging his property as part of a plot to extort money from the young man.
Ray is charged with allegedly coercing one of his followers, Sarah Lawrence student Claudia Drury, into prostitution in order to enrich herself in the amount of $2 million.
On Monday, Santos testified that on one occasion, when he accompanied Ray to a hotel to collect the money Drury had made from the sex business, the accused cult leader forced a woman to have sexual intercourse with Santos while he sat next to them and watched.
Ray waves to his father in the front row before taking his seat at the defense table during last week’s trial.
“He told Claudia to give me a job and take off my pants,” Santos testified.
Three times Santos told the court that Ray also forced him to have sex with his assistant Pollock.
On cross-examination, the defense sought to portray Santos as an unreliable witness by examining his history of mental health struggles.
Santos said that after leaving the cult in 2015, he kept his distance from Ray for four years until he was contacted in 2019 by journalists from New York magazine who were working on a story about the sex cult.
Ray is charged with 17 counts, including sex trafficking, extortion, money laundering, violent crimes in support of racketeering, conspiracy to racketeering.
Santos said he contacted Ray to talk about the article and ended up falling under his influence again.
In 2010, Ray (real name Lawrence Grecco) moved into his daughter Talia’s dorm room at a college north of New York.
Fresh out of prison following charges related to a custody fight with his ex-wife, Ray slept on the dorm room couch and, prosecutors allege, began to dominate the lives of his daughter’s group of friends.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Lindsey Keenan began her opening statement last week by describing the horrific alleged attack in October 2018.
Keenan said that Ray and another woman who served as his “trusted lieutenant” found the victim they “forced into prostitution” in a hotel where Ray tortured her for hours to make sure she would continue her sex work.
The prosecutor said Ray used “violence, fear, sex and manipulation” to gain sex, power and money.
Ray’s attorney told jurors that Ray did not commit federal crimes as he surrounded himself with college-age “tellers” who claimed to have poisoned him and physically assaulted him.
“You will see that Larry Ray is innocent,” said lawyer Allegra Glasshouser.
Ray, who was once best man at the wedding of former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, has been incarcerated since his arrest in 2020.