This story about the “Stolen Youth” docuseries was originally published in the Race Begins issue of awards magazine TheWrap.
In 2019, a tight close-up of a middle-aged man’s plump face dominated the cover of New York magazine. His eyes looked softly, yet with absolute power, directly at us. The article inside described the shocking story of Larry Ray, who moved into his daughter’s dormitory building at Sarah Lawrence College and proceeded to systematically brainwash several students into a forced labor and sex trafficking cult.
The entire saga is told in “Stolen Youth,” a three-episode Hulu series that examines the sordid details of the Ray case. He was convicted of 15 criminal charges in 2022. But the show also offers an empathetic platform for his victims, some still in the throes of Ray’s mind control. Oscar-nominated director Zachary Heinzerling (“Cutie and the Boxer”) spoke about his approach to this complex and tangled web.
There are many crimes at the center of this story, but it doesn’t feel like a true crime series. Was that a genre you were resisting?
When you think about the details of that New York magazine article, there’s the shocking and weird factor. It does not look real. But I’m not someone who’s used to committing true crimes, and this didn’t necessarily feel that way to me. I like projects where I can discover the story through the creation process and where the subjects can gain perspective on their lives. This had those elements.
Avoid showing experts talking about the phenomenon of cults and how they can attract victims. Was it deliberate?
That was incredibly important. The goal was for these people from Larry’s world, who I found to be intelligent and eloquent people, to explain the situation for themselves. And I felt like they were really good at describing the elements of control that they were up against, using their own voices. He humanized his experience.
In the third episode, you interview a woman named Isabella, who is free of Larry but still under his spell. It seems like a tricky situation for you as a filmmaker.
It’s interesting. I got feedback from other director friends during the process of doing this, and especially with regard to Isabella, they asked me, “Why didn’t you push her more?” I thought carefully about this and was in contact with experts and cult interventionists all the time, but for me the way I’ve done every project has been about meeting people where they are. So with Isabella, if all I did was challenge her, I felt like it might have had the opposite effect, where she would feel the need to strengthen her conviction. She didn’t want to act like she knew much more than she did or like she was some kind of authority figure. So she was listening without judging.
We were constantly trying to fight the idea that the victims were responsible. Cult survivors are asked, “How could you let this happen?” It is insensitive and naive to think that people “join a cult.” At that time, it seems positive and useful. We are naturally trusting as humans and do not immediately think that the person offering to help us is an insidious psychopath.
What’s really crazy is the amount of incriminating video and audio content it includes of Larry. He seemed like he recorded everything. There were thousands of hours of stuff?
Hundreds of hours, for sure. And there was much worse audio and video, which we didn’t include, if you can imagine. Archival recording is essential because it is so real. Larry was all about “the truth,” and there’s no easier way to stamp the truth on his heinous acts than to have documented evidence. The irony is that those same recordings were used to imprison him for 60 years.
That’s an old story, too, of criminals signing up on the spot.
Yes, I think it is common with delusional narcissists. Larry’s version of what’s in all that audio and video is completely different from the facts. The reality in which he lives is one in which he is at the center as a victim.
Read more of The Race Begins issue here.
