Sarah Lawrence prostitution victim wrote graphic diary detailing how she enjoyed her 'awesome' work
Jurors at the Sarah Lawrence 'sex cult' trial heard graphic excerpts from an alleged cult member's journal in which she boasts of using a strap-on sex toy on a male police officer, saying it was 'really, really cool.
She also described sex work as 'awesome.'
Claudia Drury, 31, has been on the stand since Friday when she began testifying as one of the prosecution's key witnesses, telling the court how she unraveled mentally and was coerced into a life of prostitution by defendant Larry Ray.
She claimed that the so-called 'cult leader' convinced her that she needed to make amends for 'egregious wrongs' to which she had confessed and repay more than $100,000 in debt that she owed for destruction to his property.
But today, under cross-examination, defense attorney Marne Lenox tried to paint a very different picture.
Lead defense attorney Marne Lenox cross-examined Claudia Drury about her graphic journal entries Wednesday
Over the course of three days, alleged victim Drury (left) told the court how Ray (right) allegedly forced her into a life of prostitution, abused her, and threatened to kill her after ingratiating himself with her and her friends when she was a student at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York
Far from being a sexual ingenue forced into a life of sexual drudgery Drury was, the court heard, an experienced sexual adventuress and willing participant who took it upon herself to go to sex clubs and push her sexual boundaries.
Her motivation for going into prostitution was, Lenox suggested, far more prosaic than the mind control and confusion attributed by the government to their client.
Drury was not working, could not afford her rent and tuition and, instead of moving to Connecticut with her mother, Lenox said, she turned to prostitution as a way to earn money.
Again and again in the cross-examination Drury's own words – both written and spoken – were used against her.
In notes written by Drury and displayed in court she was revealed to have stated, 'I love what I do and believe I am doing something good for myself and my clients.'
She described sex work as 'awesome' and said that the incident with the male police officer had unlocked a piece of her own sexuality and prompted her to want to buy a strap-on.
The extent to which she approached her escorting as a business was highlighted with notes that she had made regarding characters she could play to target certain demographics in adverts that she herself wrote and posted on the now defunct Backpage website.
'GND' stood for Girl Next Door she told the court. NSA stood for No Strings Attached.
In a bullet-pointed memo she annotated the 'fundamentals' of escorting: 'Charging for time and company or asking for consideration – euphemisms for sex and payment she told the court – hygiene, cancellations, extended time and overnights.
The jury was shown excerpts of Drury's journal in which she boasted of having 'f***ed a policeman 'with a strap-on'
A scan of Claudia Drury's composition book journal entered as evidence by the defense
And she used multiple aliases – Lauren Avery, Jessica Avery, Alexa, Lexa, Elle – depending on the character she was playing.
As the afternoon progressed Drury pushed back at Lenox's questions and suffered a series of memory blanks that no amount of refreshing with audio and visual exhibits appeared to help.
At one point Drury snapped at Lenox when she pronounced another alleged member of the 'sex cult' Felicia Rosario's name, 'Felisha.'
'It's Feli-c-ia,' Drury corrected, in a moment that heightened an increasingly strained and combative exchange.
The government had laid Drury's problems – mental health issues, false confessions in which she claimed she had poisoned Ray and others, violent thoughts towards her parents and her ultimate slide into prostitution – squarely at Ray's feet.
Thursday the defense bit back with Lenox revealing that Drury had told psychiatrists that she had violent thoughts about harming her friends and displayed mental health issues that saw her hospitalized when she was 16, long before she met Ray.
Records showed that she had been diagnosed with Personality Disorder with Narcissistic Traits. Yet Drury said she did not recollect it.
In direct testimony Drury had admitted that she had told stories and tall tales when she was younger, embellishing things to impress friends or gain attention.
Now, Lenox suggested that Drury's relationship with the truth had never been close and presented her instead as a serial fabricator who made up her confessions to get Ray's attention and whose account could not be trusted now.
Drury, pictured arriving at court Tuesday, finally finished testifying Thursday after repeated interruptions due to both juror issues and a medical emergency by Ray
The trial of Sarah Lawrence 'sex cult leader' Larry Ray (pictured) resumed Thursday with a federal judge finding sufficient evidence to name Ray's daughter, Talia (pictured) as a co-conspirator
Ray's sex trafficking trial was halted Tuesday after the accused sex cult leader suffered another medical emergency in court
She had, Lenox pointed out, failed to mention several key aspects of her testimony to the government across two years of talks.
Specifically, Lenox said, she never told them she had tried to run away from the North Carolina property belonging to Ray's stepfather Gordon, at which she claims she was forced to do hard labor.
Lenox said, 'In fact you told them you did not try to run away.'
In direct testimony Drury told the court she felt 'overwhelmed' and trapped and saw no way to escape.
Under cross examination Lenox drew out the fact that Drury had her phone, wallet, ID and laptop, that she had bought her own train ticket, traveled there alone and googled local cab companies to take her to the property when Ray's daughter Talia was delayed picking her up from the station.
Drury, the defense maintained, was an adult whose choices were her own and whose problems predated her relationship with Ray.
The cross examination will continue Friday morning.
Earlier, Judge Lewis Liman ruled that there is sufficient evidence to name Ray's daughter, Talia, as a co-conspirator along with his so-called lieutenant and co-accused Isabella Pollok, DailyMail.com can reveal.
Pollok is due to stand trial on multiple counts later this year. Talia, 29, remains unindicted and it will be for the government to decide whether to bring charges.
The day began with Drury back on the stand, following drama on Tuesday when Ray was stretchered out of court after suffering an apparent seizure. The court was suspended completely on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday.
Dressed in a pale blue shirt and navy pants, Ray on Thursday presented a robust figure in court and showed no signs of the illness.
Talia (left) has been named as a co-conspirator along with Ray's so-called 'lieutenant' and co-accused Isabella Pollok, (right) DailyMail.com can reveal
On Thursday, Claudia Drury (pictured in a court sketch) concluded her testimony detailing the life of prostitution into which she claims Ray forced her
Drury concluded her direct testimony detailing the life of prostitution into which she claims Ray forced her.
She said on a very bad week she made $10,000 and on a good week $50,000 in proceeds that she handed over to Ray and Pollok.
Drury recalled an incident when Ray cuffed her to a hotel chair, suffocated her with a plastic bag, smothered her with a pillow and threatened to waterboard her when she had become too close to the client, whom she later credited with helping get out of the life.
She also told jurors that Ray had asked her to make a list of her clients which he planned to use as 'a threat' and 'leverage' and threatened to publish online.
Ironically, the Department of Justice did just that earlier this week when they put the list, a sealed exhibit, on a public portal before quickly taking it down.
Rising to cross examine Drury, defense attorney Marne Lenox attempted to make damaging inroads into her credibility.
She used Drury's own words against her and started with her admission that she told 'stories' and tall tales to win favor and impress friends.
That same flaw was, she implied, something that had escalated with her relationship with Ray and her struggle to transition from high school to college.
Lenox highlighted the fact that Drury had been untruthful with prosecutors when they first spoke with her in 2020 and that she had lied in housing court in a bid to help Ray avoid eviction.
Drury insisted that she believed what she was saying at the time and her memory, so clear on direct, failed her more than once as she claimed not to recall emails and texts shown to her in court.
An audio recording played in court revealed her making up a story in vivid detail about three men, jumping from a white van and threatening her.
Lenox accused Drury of making 'Larry's villains' her own in a bid to curry favor and gain attention.
Drury, who worked as a prostitute from the beginning of 2015 to April 8, 2019, told jurors she made $10,000 on a 'bad week' and up to $50,000 on a 'good week'
Testimony in the sex trafficking case resumed two days after the trial was abruptly halted due to Ray suffering a medical emergency in court.
An attorney for Ray called for a break in the middle of proceedings late Tuesday morning after his client shook and gasped behind his mask.
Judge Liman cleared the courtroom while court officers rushed in with a first aid kit and defibrillator and a medic followed on.
Ray was then stretchered out of Manhattan Federal Court and on to an ambulance waiting outside.
The former convict is on trial for allegedly sex trafficking his daughter's friends from a dorm room on the campus of the elite New York liberal arts college.
Tuesday's emergency marked the end of a morning during which jurors heard often-harrowing testimony from Drury as she chronicled in disturbing detail how Ray allegedly bullied and groomed her into a life of prostitution, convincing her she had to make amends for 'egregious wrongs' and repay debts of more than $100,000.
Assistant US Attorney Danielle Sassoon focused on the sexual grooming that, prosecutors claim, Ray used to funnel Drury into a life of prostitution from which he garnered more than $2.5million.
Drury told the court that Ray suggested she take part in a 'gang bang' telling her that sex with multiple partners was liberating and fun.
She told how he set her sexual challenges that she - already unravelling - took in a bid to win his favor and 'make repairs' for wrongs of which he accused her.
Ray is accused of 17 counts including sex-trafficking, extortion, money laundering, violent crime in aid of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy
The accusations were primarily of damage to property but escalated to an insistence that she had poisoned him and his daughter, Talia.
'He told me to take a cab ride and at the end of it instead of paying suggest I had sex with the driver instead,' Drury told the court.
'He also told me to pick up someone on the street and have sex with them in Central Park.'
Asked if she did these things Drury replied: 'Yes.'
On Ray's suggestion, the former college student claimed that she had taken work as an escort in a sex club.
There she detailed her introduction to BDSM (Bondage and Sadomasochism). She described some of it as 'quite severe' and said that she took the 'submissive' role with the sex club clients and one of its managers.
The court was shown graphic pictures of her bruised buttocks, images that, she said she had sent to Ray at his request.
She said that Ray, with whom she had fallen into a fractious relationship pattern of confrontation, allegation, punishment, 'confession' and reparation from her, was 'encouraging' of her actions and the pictures.
Ray ultimately ingratiated himself with his daughter Talia's friends at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York, including Santos Rosario (pictured left with Talia) Daniel Levin, Felicia Rosario (right) and Isabella Pollok
PICTURED: Alleged cult victims Santos Rosario, (far left) Dan Levin (middle) and Claudia Drury, in evidence photos submitted to the court
Sarah Lawrence College is an elite liberal arts college in Bronxville, just north of New York City
She also said that, by this time, she had built up so much 'self-hate' having 'solidly taken on the role of sabotager' in the 'cult' that she found an outlet and relief in the pain of BDSM.
On some level she felt that she deserved the punishment for all the supposed 'wrongs of which, she said, Ray accused her across a sustained campaign of coercion.
Ray played on her fears, often speaking graphically about jail and what would happen to her there.
'He talked about it for years and years. He described in detail the size of a prison cell, made me walk the size of a prison cell,' she said.
'He told me graphic things about what people would do to me. Because I was smaller [he said] that women would make me their b***h and he described how they would use the restroom and defecate and use my face and tongue as toilet paper.
'He talked about it many times in many different ways.'
Drury said she worked as a prostitute from the beginning of 2015 to April 8, 2019.
At her most profitable she saw three or more clients a day charging $2,000 an hour, $2,400 for two hours with fees rising in increments from there.
She said she handed most of her money to Ray and Isabella Pollok – his co-accused and so-called 'lieutenant.'
The court heard how Ray's alleged campaign of control escalated during the summer of 2013, when Drury and several others travelled to Pinehurst, North Carolina, to help with yardwork at Ray's stepfather's property (pictured)
PICTURED: Larry Ray outside his stepfather's home in Pinehurst, North Carolina
On two occasions Ray told Drury and Pollok to be sexual with each other and others she said while he watched.
On other occasions Ray would use the props that he told her to buy for clients. Her voice dipping so that the judge had to remind her to speak up, Drury listed the props, 'Handcuffs, crops, floggers, leash, collar, ball-gag, dildos.'
The difference, she said, between clients using these and Ray was that when she told clients to stop, she knew that they would. With Ray, she said: 'I was scared.'
Drury is one of at least five cult members who were students at the elite liberal arts college in Bronxville, just north of Manhattan, when they met the accused sex trafficker.
Ray was introduced to the group in the fall of 2010 when he began living in his daughter Talia's on-campus dorm, where he persuaded her friends to stay the next summer at his city apartment.
Prosecutors say Ray coerced the students to join his 'family' as he accumulated power, sex and money, forcing one woman into a sex work enterprise so lucrative that she turned over more than $1million to him in a single year.
Jurors heard how his alleged campaign of control escalated during the summer of 2013, when the students travelled to Pinehurst, North Carolina, to help with yardwork at Ray's stepfather's property.
Talia Ray is seen with Larry Ray's stepfather Gordon at his Pinehurst property
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ShareAt this point, Ray was controlling what students ate – forbidding carbohydrates – and forcing them to work sometimes until three or four in the morning to re-do mistakes that he found in their work, according to Drury.
Ray, who once served as the best man at a wedding of disgraced former New York City police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, has been incarcerated since his 2020 arrest.
He is a well-known New York scammer with a murky past. In addition to spending times behind bars for his role in a securities fraud scam, he has worked on Wall Street, owned nightclubs, been an FBI informant and inserted himself in into powerful networks by brokering meetings.
He had previously been sentenced to five years probation for his role in a securities fraud scam.
The allegations involving the latest case were laid out in a lengthy article by New York magazine's The Cut in 2019, that included accounts from some of the purported cult members.
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