Slonim Woods 9: A Memoir

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Levin also reflected on the documentary, and said that he hopes it'll prompt viewers to start a "deeper conversation" about cults and what they are. I need to be there, to be better,” the voice said. “This feeling I’m calling ‘nervous’ is evidence of exactly that, that I need him to help me.”

An intense tale of coercion, humiliation, gaslighting, and physical torment. It's also one of hard-won survival, and creating a life after the unimaginable.” — Salon

According to audio recordings (Larry maintained a vast archive of his so-called therapy sessions) and video clips included in the show, Larry alternately soothed and berated them. He frequently accused the students of breaking his stuff and, even if they didn't remember doing so, they'd get so confused they'd eventually admit doing whatever he said they did. He also offered his attention. One by one, Ray met with the students in private, usually in his daughter’s bedroom, listening to the stories of their emotional turmoil. The process of writing the book did a few things for me. I had gone through an experience that seems explicitly designed around telling a new story for me about who I was and what my memories even were.

Ray’s demands became more sinister. He called Levin into his bedroom to instruct him on how to seduce Isabella, one of the women in the apartment who was also under Ray’s spell. 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. The man who abused me was such a talented storyteller that he could convince you that something that wasn't real was real. Writing was not only about telling my story as I remember it and believe it. I spent a year writing this, and every day of writing it I had to make the claim that my account matters and is valid. I'm staking my flag in my own credibility, and I'm saying I trust myself. Then also even further, it's kind of an attempt to trust other people, just to give people my story and hope that they will believe me. 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. I think that when people see the documentary, the part that feels important to me about it being on video, the way it is, is that people will be able to see these unbelievable things."

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All I wanted was to be like him,” Levin writes. “To never be unhappy or unsure about anything, ever again.” I'm thinking a lot about how we can take this experience and try to do the most good with it and create community for other survivors," he shared. "I think there's lot of talk about abuse, and there's not maybe as much talk about recovery."

During the summer of 2011, Ray moved into a one-bedroom condo on the Upper East Side, in the Waterford building on 93rd Street, and invited six of Talia’s friends to join him, rent-free. As far as the specifics of what Larry did, "what we present is a fraction of what happened," Heinzerling said, "but ultimately the story was more about how it happened. How do you get an audience to understand what it's like to be 18, 19—that period of your life where you're seeking answers. And also, what does love-bombing look like? What does gaslighting feel like? Another norm in the apartment was the most trivial things becomingdaily chaos — crisis after manufactured crisis, saboteurs in their midst, beset by conspirators. When each crisis was resolved, Ray would marvel at all the trouble they had caused. Right, and every day there’s a new version of the hardest ethical question you’ve ever been asked, at the highest stakes imaginable. When I was asked to interview Daniel Barban Levin about his recent memoir, Slonim Woods 9(Crown), I was on board right away. It was about a cult, a subject that I find highly intriguing. I’ve read books about cults, watched all the cult documentaries, thought a lot about what draws people into cults, what pathologies make up a cult leader. And even more intriguing is that this particular cult narrative involved a small group of students attending Sarah Lawrence College.

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All these years later, Levin has learned to frame what happened to him, to look at it, not as something that defines him, but as something that happened to him. 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. That makes sense and I should say that in the writing process, that was also happening in a literal sense. I moved across the country to California and interestingly, without it even occurring to me, I moved into an artist's loft, and I was living with seven other people, sort of replicating the experience. My therapist says this is something our brains do naturally is try to access echoes of the traumatic experience, but in a safe way to process. So I moved in with all these people, but they were all wonderful. And if I was writing a chapter that took place in the living room of this apartment, I’d go to my actual apartment in California and go into the living room and it felt as if I was in both places at once.