Talia Ray was a victim or a beneficiary of her father’s abusive and manipulative ways.

The jury is out on whether Talia Ray was a victim or a beneficiary of her father’s abusive and manipulative ways. As The Cut reported in April 2019, the nightmare for several students of Sarah Lawrence College started when Talia invited her father, Larry Ray, to crash on the campus building’s couch. 

In the Hulu documentary Stolen Youth, Larry’s victims say they saw the arrangement as unconventional, but few objected. Larry steadily gained trust and control over the Slonim Woods 9 dorm members. 

“Everyone thought Talia’s dad was weird, but then one by one he would get them alone, and suddenly he’s the greatest thing to happen to them,” Raven Juarez, whose close acquaintances fell into Larry’s snare, says. 

Talia Ray likely lives in North Carolina, where she works as a paralegal. 

Talia, who adopted a secretive life, reportedly lives in North Carolina, where she works as a paralegal at the Southern Coalition for Social Justice. She moved to Durham, where her grand-stepfather resides, in 2014. 

Talia hasn’t updated her Facebook page since August 2020, with her last post encouraging her followers to vote. She has a private Twitter account bearing the following description, “AVA I LOVE YOU & I MISS YOU EVERY DAY! Xoxo always, Your Big Sister.”

Talia lost contact with Ava after a court awarded custody of the children to her mother. Talia, who’d testified that her mother was physically and sexually abusive, decided to stay in local shelters in solidarity with her father. It shows that Larry had likely brainwashed Talia for a long time. 

It’s unclear whether Talia conspired with her father to abuse and defraud her friends. She was reportedly aware of Larry’s cult and was declared a co-conspirator by prosecutors. “What you have done with my friends is the most amazing and beautiful thing I have ever seen,” a 2013 email sent to Larry by Talia reads. 

Some people view Talia as Larry’s biggest victim since she was exposed to his manipulative ways since childhood. Daniel Barban Levin, one of Larry’s victims, says in the Hulu documentary that he’s open to chatting with Talia, who didn’t face criminal charges. Levin says sympathetically:

“I think that if she reached out to me I would be curious to have that conversation. But it’s really hard for me to imagine what her experience is, and I feel a lot of compassion for someone who has lived with Larry Ray since she was a baby, I can’t imagine that.”

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