Speaker 1: When Felicia Rosario met Larry Ray, she had no idea
Speaker 1: her entire world would be destroyed. Felicia was a bright,
Speaker 1: ambitious graduate of Harvard and Columbia who had just begun
Speaker 1: her psychiatry residency when her brother introduced her to Larry,
Speaker 1: a fast talking, charismatic man who also happened to be
Speaker 1: his girlfriend's father. Little did she know, Larry was leading
Speaker 1: a sadistic cult, manipulating and abusing her brother and his
Speaker 1: fellow classmates at Sarah Lawrence College. What began as a
Speaker 1: fast paced courtship quickly deteriorated into a coercive and terrorizing
Speaker 1: relationship that dismantled Felicia's health, career, family, and life. In
Speaker 1: this intense episode of Navigating Narcissism.
Speaker 2: You will hear more untold.
Speaker 1: Stories of the cult at this pristine Djus College when
Speaker 1: Felicia reveals details of her experience for the first time.
Speaker 1: From Red Table Talk Podcasts and iHeartMedia, I'm Doctor Rominy
Speaker 1: and this is Navigating Narcissism. This podcast should not be
Speaker 1: used as a substitute for medical or mental health advice.
Speaker 1: Individuals are advised to seek independent medical advice, counseling, and
Speaker 1: or therapy from a healthcare professional with respect to any
Speaker 1: medical condition, mental health issue, or health inquiry, including matters
Speaker 1: discussed on this podcast. This episode discusses abuse and suicide,
Speaker 1: which may be triggering to some people. The views and
Speaker 1: opinions expressed are solely those of the podcast author or
Speaker 1: individuals participating in the podcast, and do not represent the
Speaker 1: opinions of Red Table Talk productions, iHeartMedia, or their employees. Felicia,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me. Last week, we
Speaker 1: actually spoke with your fellow survivor, Daniel Levin, and although
Speaker 1: you both were abused and tormented by the same person,
Speaker 1: your experiences are very different. So can we just start
Speaker 1: at the top. How did you meet Larry Ray?
Speaker 3: So? I met Larry Ray through my brother Santos, who
Speaker 3: was a student at Sarah Lawrence. He was friends with
Speaker 3: his daughter, Talia, and Santos really wanted me to meet him,
Speaker 3: and I flew back from California to visit because I
Speaker 3: started my job, my training in psychiatry out in Los Angeles.
Speaker 3: And then we went to dinner. That's when it started
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 1: And what was it like at that first meeting.
Speaker 3: The first meeting was very exciting, he's a very big personality,
Speaker 3: can easily overwhelm. He talks a mile a minute. He's
Speaker 3: just very excited. But he was really interesting and he
Speaker 3: knew a lot about a lot of different things, and
Speaker 3: he really seemed to genuinely care about all of us,
Speaker 3: which was really, you know, meaningful to me.
Speaker 1: You said you were doing your psychiatry training. What was
Speaker 1: your life like when you met Larry?
Speaker 3: So when I met Larry, I was living in California.
Speaker 3: I was an intern, I had my own apartment. You know,
Speaker 3: I was really enjoying my job. I was making friends.
Speaker 3: The things were good.
Speaker 1: I think that it's also important for people to know
Speaker 1: you're an incredibly accomplished person. Not only were you in
Speaker 1: psychiatry residency at the time, you had completed your undergraduate
Speaker 1: degree at Harvard, and you'd done your medical training at Columbia.
Speaker 1: The reason I'm mentioning that is that when we hear
Speaker 1: stories like anyone who's gone through something like this, there
Speaker 1: is a reflexive assumption that, well, there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: this person or they didn't have it together. You had
Speaker 1: it about as together as anyone I could think of
Speaker 1: in terms of discipline and focus and ambition.
Speaker 2: And pursuit.
Speaker 1: That stereotype is one that I've always been very focused
Speaker 1: on breaking that.
Speaker 2: Well, only broken.
Speaker 1: People get pulled into these relationships, or only people who
Speaker 1: don't have anything going on. It's absolutely not the truth.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately people look backwards and say, maybe I didn't
Speaker 1: have it together, and I'm just telling you, clearly you
Speaker 1: had it together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I have doubted myself in the past and like,
Speaker 3: you know, what was going on with me, what was
Speaker 3: wrong with me? But I agree, I totally agree with
Speaker 3: you that it's not that I was broken. It's that,
Speaker 3: at least in my case, he had an agenda and
Speaker 3: he had bad intentions, and it didn't matter if I
Speaker 3: have had it together or not. No, you know, it's
Speaker 3: about Larry's intention in the relationship, in the interaction.
Speaker 1: And not only is it about Larry's intention. I mean, Felicia,
Speaker 1: that wasn't his opener. It wasn't like you met this
Speaker 1: person who was manipulative and confusing and exploitative from the
Speaker 1: jump you yourself said. You just said, I met a
Speaker 1: person who was incredibly engaged, incredibly interested and interesting, who
Speaker 1: was very present. These are things that people are normally
Speaker 1: drawn too. And I'm putting a finer point on it,
Speaker 1: because again we have this picture of, oh, you didn't
Speaker 1: see something right from the beginning, or it's just because
Speaker 1: there was something off about you. I'm not hearing anything
Speaker 1: off about you at all, and very together, very clear
Speaker 1: on who you were, what you stood for, and you
Speaker 1: met someone who was actually incredibly interesting in all of that.
Speaker 1: But from that first meeting with Larry, how did the
Speaker 1: relationship develop from there?
Speaker 3: So it started off with Larry. It was very friendly
Speaker 3: at first. I think Larry had plotted with my sister
Speaker 3: and my brother to have this dinner so that way
Speaker 3: they could you have us meet and then could start
Speaker 3: to work on me.
Speaker 1: By the time Felicia met Larry, both her brother Santos
Speaker 1: and sister Yalitza had been pulled into his web. A
Speaker 1: detail that is often missed in this story is that
Speaker 1: not only was Larry charismatic and engaging, Felicia's own siblings
Speaker 1: had sort of signed off on him.
Speaker 3: He was very charming. We started talking once a week,
Speaker 3: and then a few times a week, and then it
Speaker 3: was every day, multiple times a day. I would wake up,
Speaker 3: he would call me, We would talk all day and
Speaker 3: or text. I would call him at lunch, and then
Speaker 3: at night he didn't sleep. He was just up at
Speaker 3: all hours. Right because he was in New York and
Speaker 3: I was in California, he laid it on. I think
Speaker 3: we met in September, and by November he was saying
Speaker 3: I love you. By February he was planning our wedding
Speaker 3: in Disney World, and like babies, the whole nine escalated
Speaker 3: very quickly, and then he started accusing me of cheating
Speaker 3: on him. And he was like, I know you're out
Speaker 3: there having sex with all of these people, but he
Speaker 3: was obsessed with this idea of like really hyper sexualizing me,
Speaker 3: and if it wasn't that he was accusing me of
Speaker 3: cheating on him, he would go to the other end
Speaker 3: of wanting me to go out and have sex with
Speaker 3: strangers and recording it for him. So the message was
Speaker 3: very confusing and uncomfortable, because you know, on one hand,
Speaker 3: I was being accused of lying, and then the other
Speaker 3: he was trying to get me to do things that
Speaker 3: I had never done before and that I didn't want
Speaker 3: to do, and I resisted for a very long time.
Speaker 1: There were some patterns that showed up in the first
Speaker 1: few months of Felicia's relationship with Larry that reflect early
Speaker 1: signs of a coercively controlling relationship. These include a quick escalation,
Speaker 1: a sort of fantasy planning phase, what would their wedding
Speaker 1: be like, that they would have children, constant and frequent contact, jealousy,
Speaker 1: and accusations of cheating. When Felicia met Larry, her life
Speaker 1: was going well and she found Larry to be interesting
Speaker 1: and engaging. This confusing mix of factors means that anyone
Speaker 1: in a relationship that has all of these confusing features
Speaker 1: is getting lost in something that is at times exciting
Speaker 1: but also unsettling. And it is basically a period of indoctrination,
Speaker 1: and that leaves a person so confused that they are
Speaker 1: easier to control. I mean, that's not a surprising pattern, right,
Speaker 1: It's fostering of doubt in yourself. You're doing this, you're
Speaker 1: doing that. No, no, I'm not so, you're defending yourself.
Speaker 1: You're off balance. But then in that same breath, it's
Speaker 1: basically go out and do things, get evidence of it,
Speaker 1: which I'm going to turn around and weaponize.
Speaker 2: But you wouldn't have known that at the time.
Speaker 1: It's all incredibly, incredibly confusing. Do you think it was
Speaker 1: the long distance that fostered it moving so quickly and
Speaker 1: becoming so intense so quickly.
Speaker 3: One we connected very quickly, and he was really good
Speaker 3: at talking to me and engaging me right. There were
Speaker 3: external factors that helped move it along, because one, Santos
Speaker 3: had already dated Talia, and I met Talia before I
Speaker 3: met Larry, and she was lovely, she was super sweet.
Speaker 3: I really liked her. She was a very kind, honest,
Speaker 3: honorable person. So then my brother started talking to Larry,
Speaker 3: and then my brother said, oh, Larry is great. Then
Speaker 3: my sister started talking to Larry, and then my sister says,
Speaker 3: Larry's great. My parents meet Larry, they really like him too.
Speaker 3: So my whole circle is invested right, and everyone's like
Speaker 3: signing off on him. So I feel more comfortable talking
Speaker 3: to Larry because everyone else around me is like, yeah,
Speaker 3: this guy is a good guy, and you know, we're
Speaker 3: all believing him. The other part of it was that
Speaker 3: he was helping my brother, he was helping my sister,
Speaker 3: helping them with their self esteem, helping them understand themselves better.
Speaker 3: What he was doing with them at the beginning was real.
Speaker 3: He was actually employing like actual techniques to help them.
Speaker 3: We had been through a very difficult time not too
Speaker 3: long before that. My brother had had a suicide attempt
Speaker 3: in two thousand and nine, and we had quite a
Speaker 3: bit of chaos in our family and we hadn't totally
Speaker 3: dealt with it. And as the eldest, I'm nine years
Speaker 3: older than my brother and I'm seven years older than
Speaker 3: my sister. My parents came from Dominican Republic. They only
Speaker 3: spoke Spanish. I'm the translator from a young age, and
Speaker 3: then I'm the one that figures stuff out, you know,
Speaker 3: So I become a parentified child. Yeah, and I'm effectively
Speaker 3: the third parent, and I'm taking care of my sister
Speaker 3: and my brother, and I'm helping to raise them, making
Speaker 3: sure that they go to good schools, making sure that,
Speaker 3: you know, they're successful. My brother thankfully was able to
Speaker 3: graduate from high school and went on to Sarah Lawrence,
Speaker 3: which is a wonderful recovery. But we still didn't deal
Speaker 3: with what had happened. And Larry comes and he's helping
Speaker 3: my brother, he helps my sister. He start to bring
Speaker 3: some clarity to what had been going on with us,
Speaker 3: and honestly, he was taking some of the load off
Speaker 3: from me to he was helping me because I was
Speaker 3: in California, but I was still trying to, you know,
Speaker 3: be a good sister to my siblings, but it's hard
Speaker 3: to do from across the country. I felt like a
Speaker 3: huge weight off my shoulders. I'm like, there's finally somebody
Speaker 3: around who's competent, who's capable, who gets stuff done, and
Speaker 3: who's actually helping them and helping me by helping them. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and I felt supported. You know, I haven't had that before.
Speaker 3: My parents have been supportive. I'm not going to take
Speaker 3: that away from them, but it gets tiring when you're
Speaker 3: doing things all on your own.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you gave that context, Felicia, because otherwise
Speaker 1: it almost sounds like, meet this person, super charismatic, we
Speaker 1: talk a lot, and then it becomes intense and you know,
Speaker 1: we're in a relationship and you fall in love. You're
Speaker 1: missing this really really subtle and important, important dynamic because
Speaker 1: the place where a person can get us the most
Speaker 1: is the thing that we need the most. So it
Speaker 1: may not be a dozen roses or a gift coming
Speaker 1: in the mail, it could be this sense of feeling supported.
Speaker 1: It is an incredibly seductive dynamic in a way that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't traditionally think of something as seductive. And I
Speaker 1: think that piece of it really rounds out the understanding
Speaker 1: and makes us understand how every one of these ultimately
Speaker 1: really toxic relationships can really start at a place where
Speaker 1: somebody's fitting a puzzle piece in that we needed and
Speaker 1: it's specific to us.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, we like to.
Speaker 1: Talk about love bombing and the early idealized phases of
Speaker 1: these relationships as though they always go down the same way.
Speaker 1: And while there were some of those elements in this story,
Speaker 1: each of us has vulnerabilities that are unique to us
Speaker 1: and represent a spot where love bombing can simply be
Speaker 1: someone giving us something we desperately need. Felicia had been
Speaker 1: carrying a heavy load for a long time. She often
Speaker 1: had to care for her younger siblings, had major academic demands,
Speaker 1: and helped her parents. Larry Raised power may simply have
Speaker 1: been that he was lifting some of that burden for
Speaker 1: her by providing guidance to her brother. Love Bombing isn't
Speaker 1: always nights out and over the top romance. Sometimes it
Speaker 1: is simply someone helping us when we need it most.
Speaker 3: Larry was incredibly clever and manipulative, So he profiled everyone beforehand.
Speaker 3: He knew what was going to be attractive to me
Speaker 3: and what would bring me into him.
Speaker 1: You were in psychiatry residency, I'm a psychologist. Did you
Speaker 1: ever take pause at the fact that it almost felt
Speaker 1: like Larry was acting as a sort of untrained therapist
Speaker 1: with your brother, with your sister, with a lot of
Speaker 1: other people. I mean, he was sort of spouting out
Speaker 1: sort of first year seminar kinds of stuff to them.
Speaker 1: Did that ever give you pause or make you sort
Speaker 1: of look sideways at the situation?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, totally. I'm still trying to figure this out
Speaker 3: because I remember when Santos first started talking about Larry.
Speaker 3: There was something that he said that Santos was basically like,
Speaker 3: you can't speak negatively about Larry. And I'm like, what
Speaker 3: are you talking about? Like? Who is this guy that
Speaker 3: you can't talk bad about? Right? And I was clear
Speaker 3: minded then, and I was like, this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 3: Why are you like this about him? You know, I
Speaker 3: had to manage a lot of difficult situations like growing
Speaker 3: up and then you know, as a woman, as a minority,
Speaker 3: navigating the academic circles that I was in. I was
Speaker 3: very emotionally intelligent, and so with Larry, it wasn't so
Speaker 3: much about if I'm a doctor, why didn't I recognize it?
Speaker 3: It's more that I'm a human being. I'm training as
Speaker 3: a doctor to perform a skill a profession, but I'm
Speaker 3: a person and feelings, emotions, connection, that's way more important
Speaker 3: than any profession. Right. So then when he came in
Speaker 3: and he was able to help with that feeling of connection,
Speaker 3: with that support, you know that was going to override anything.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yep, And I think that is a really important point.
Speaker 1: It's not just about technical skills, but about that again,
Speaker 1: that emotional connection and you reading it as such, above
Speaker 1: and beyond all this technique stuff.
Speaker 3: He slipped under the radar. So he presented really well,
Speaker 3: and that took away my natural guard, right, my instinct.
Speaker 3: So there was alarm at the beginning, and then he
Speaker 3: quelled it because he was able to have very intricate
Speaker 3: conversation about the mind in psychiatry, and then he claimed
Speaker 3: to have training, and then when I would see him
Speaker 3: talk to people, it was actually effective. And he goes
Speaker 3: and talks to doctors and everyone's speaking to him like
Speaker 3: a peer, and it would happen at every hospital we
Speaker 3: went to. By the time we left, he was shaking
Speaker 3: their hand, they were hugging him. They're like, thank you
Speaker 3: so much, Larry for coming in. So he was so
Speaker 3: smooth and he was smart. It was something that did
Speaker 3: give me pause at first, but then I saw other
Speaker 3: doctors be comfortable with him, and even though he might
Speaker 3: not be credentialed, he was still competent.
Speaker 1: When people show up with confidence, it's very very convincing.
Speaker 1: And you understand this because you're in the biz. Those
Speaker 1: of us who are therapists, we're really kind of taught
Speaker 1: to hold back a little.
Speaker 3: Bit, right.
Speaker 1: We're not advice givers, we're not life coaches, right, like
Speaker 1: we're helping someone meander through emotions. He was being very directive.
Speaker 1: He was sort of doing what people fantasize therapy is,
Speaker 1: which is somebody telling you what it's about. And they
Speaker 1: were younger, and so for them, somebody just sort of
Speaker 1: laying it out. Can feel really reassuring. That very directive
Speaker 1: stance he was taking wasn't therapy. Was some you know,
Speaker 1: it was madness, but it wasn't this manipulation.
Speaker 3: But it felt helpful, and then there were results yesterwards.
Speaker 3: He gets them motivated enough to do five hundred push
Speaker 3: ups a day, and they get their work done on time,
Speaker 3: they get you know, good grades, and so all of
Speaker 3: the things that they're wanting results on, they're actually happening.
Speaker 2: Right in that time.
Speaker 1: Your internship and residency anyone listening to this, if you
Speaker 1: don't know, is an extraordinarily demanding time. Trainees are working
Speaker 1: twelve to fifteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day, sometimes twenty
Speaker 1: four hour you know call it is exhausting. You're on edge,
Speaker 1: you don't fully know what you're doing. The people who
Speaker 1: are training you aren't always nice to you. It's not easy.
Speaker 1: You were talking to Larry a lot mornings, lunch breaks, nights.
Speaker 1: Did you have other people you were spending time with
Speaker 1: at that time? And talking to friends colleagues doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like as much time as with him. But were there
Speaker 1: other significant voices in your life or people you were
Speaker 1: spending time with?
Speaker 3: So? Yes, so at the beginning, I have made you know,
Speaker 3: friends early on with a lot of my intern class.
Speaker 3: Then Larry time started to take over. I mean I
Speaker 3: did keep up the relationships, but not as much as
Speaker 3: I would have had I not been talking to Larry
Speaker 3: all that time.
Speaker 1: So it was the hospital and the work, and so
Speaker 1: it seems though over time Larry started encroaching more and
Speaker 1: more of whatever tiny shreds of spare time you had.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to understand how much he was becoming the
Speaker 1: loudest voice in your life.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know, on a weekend before I met Larry,
Speaker 3: I was going out to the beach or restaurants or
Speaker 3: exploring different parts of Los Angeles, and you know, trying
Speaker 3: new things with my new friends. And then as the
Speaker 3: months went on, I would spend all weekend on the
Speaker 3: phone with him, like from morning tonight, and it was
Speaker 3: all day every day, and like my phone would die
Speaker 3: in the middle of us talking, and then he would
Speaker 3: freak out because I had hung up the phone because
Speaker 3: my phone died. So he did become the loudest voice.
Speaker 1: How would you make sense of his tantrums at a
Speaker 1: phone hanging up after you were spending so many hours
Speaker 1: on the phone. How did you tell that story to yourself?
Speaker 3: That's a great question because so when you say it
Speaker 3: out loud, right, when I tell you that I was
Speaker 3: on the phone phone with him for hours and he
Speaker 3: has a tantrum because my phone died. Like even now
Speaker 3: that sounds crazy, something's wrong with him because the time
Speaker 3: that we spent on the phone, he's wearing me down,
Speaker 3: like every hour, and some of the conversations were so draining.
Speaker 3: And I remember a conversation I had on the beach.
Speaker 3: I wanted to enjoy my Saturday, and he was trying
Speaker 3: to get me to talk about like if I had
Speaker 3: ever been abused, or if I had had sex with
Speaker 3: my teachers at school, all of these really heavy, very
Speaker 3: uncomfortable topics, and he just kept pressing them. So by
Speaker 3: the time I got off the phone, I was just
Speaker 3: relieved he had worn down my confidence in myself and
Speaker 3: my own trust in myself that I was just freaking
Speaker 3: out that he was freaking out. I was like, oh no,
Speaker 3: Larry's upset. How do I fix this? Like how do
Speaker 3: I make it better? Like I'm not even thinking about
Speaker 3: me anymore. I'm not clear minded anymore when it comes
Speaker 3: to him, because of how he had been wearing on me,
Speaker 3: like day after date.
Speaker 2: Night after night.
Speaker 1: It isn't a doctrination process. And it's this interesting pull
Speaker 1: because it goes exactly back to what your brother said,
Speaker 1: don't say anything bad about him. It's sort of the
Speaker 1: manipulation sets you up to always appease someone like him.
Speaker 1: You need to make sure he's okay. There's a fear
Speaker 1: if he's not okay. Do you have any recollection of
Speaker 1: what the fear was for you? If he wasn't.
Speaker 3: Okay, my life would be over. It wasn't like I
Speaker 3: was never going to find somebody right that I'm like.
Speaker 3: I was worried that I'm never going to meet someone
Speaker 3: like Larry again, I'll never find love again. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't even like that. It was more primal that like
Speaker 3: my life would end like mentally, I could no longer
Speaker 3: survive without him. And if he stopped talking to me,
Speaker 3: I don't know what I would do. I would just
Speaker 3: fall apart and the world would end. And I don't
Speaker 3: know how he did that, because it's a very extreme
Speaker 3: line of thought, right, But that's how I felt for years.
Speaker 3: My life would be over if he stopped talking to me.
Speaker 3: It didn't matter if he was beating me, it didn't
Speaker 3: matter what he was doing to me. The worst thing
Speaker 3: that could happen to me is if he went away.
Speaker 1: People like him literally convince you they are the air
Speaker 1: you breathe and it's what he was doing. I'm going
Speaker 1: to keep you on the phone for eighteen hours at
Speaker 1: a time. It is a systematic indoctrination where if you
Speaker 1: hear something enough, it becomes your reality. It's that simple.
Speaker 1: It would happen to any of us. Yeah, absolutely, that's
Speaker 1: slowly what was happening. But yet he had been legitimized
Speaker 1: by his relationship with your brother, with your sister, with
Speaker 1: your parents liking him, with you liking his daughter, you know,
Speaker 1: with him caring about your life, all of that, and
Speaker 1: you were far away and the conversations were a touchstone
Speaker 1: in the middle of a very very busy, impactful time
Speaker 1: in your training. It gives us a rounder picture of
Speaker 1: how this could happen so insidiously over time. So he
Speaker 1: kept trying to push this question hour after hour. Did
Speaker 1: you experience prior abuse as a child with teachers? What
Speaker 1: did you think he was trying to do?
Speaker 3: Then, you know, he didn't ask it the way that
Speaker 3: a therapist would ask it. I think that's actually something
Speaker 3: that I'm just thinking about right now. For example, with
Speaker 3: the teachers, it would be more like he was trying
Speaker 3: to have like a sexy conversation, and it was like
Speaker 3: so not sexy to me. But he was like, oh,
Speaker 3: I bet you blew your math teacher. I'm sure you
Speaker 3: had sex with like tons of guys in high school.
Speaker 3: He would try to pry this information from me, and
Speaker 3: I would just keep saying no, right, and then he
Speaker 3: would see like, no, you're lying. I know you're lying
Speaker 3: to me. You look like a good girl, but I'm
Speaker 3: sure you were. You were up to a lot of
Speaker 3: stuff when you were in school. I'm like, no, I wasn't.
Speaker 3: And then he got so aggressive that I started making
Speaker 3: stuff up. Yep, Like I started saying, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: did it. Yes, I totally did it. Yeah, yeah I
Speaker 3: had sex with my math teacher. No, I've never had
Speaker 3: sex with my math teacher. Just a broad disclaimer there.
Speaker 3: I've never had sex with with any teacher. So I
Speaker 3: started to make things up just to appease him. And
Speaker 3: then he would be like, oh, that sounds good, tell
Speaker 3: me more, and I'm like, tell you more of what
Speaker 3: you know, and then I would have to like try
Speaker 3: to make up stories.
Speaker 1: We're seeing the beginnings of a pattern of him breaking
Speaker 1: you down and then starting to rescue you. Breaking you
Speaker 1: down and then starting to rescue you. This is a
Speaker 1: very classic element of something we see malignant, narcissistic and
Speaker 1: psychopathic relationships. Right, they start working both sides of the game, right,
Speaker 1: they destroy you, they rescue They destroy you, they rescue you,
Speaker 1: and that's how you create probably one of the most
Speaker 1: persistent trauma bonds. But even the thing you were saying
Speaker 1: about is making stuff up. I'm going to give you
Speaker 1: a mild example of this, right, because I think that
Speaker 1: people say, well, I want to make up that I
Speaker 1: would have slept with my math teacher. No, maybe a
Speaker 1: lot of people wouldn't, but I'll tell you this. When
Speaker 1: you have a toxic person who's coming at you, yeah
Speaker 1: you did, Yeah, tell me, I know you slept at
Speaker 1: that teacher. Let's use a mild example of this is
Speaker 1: the best pizza. No, this is this play this is
Speaker 1: the best pizza. Come on, tell me, tell me, tell
Speaker 1: me it's the best pizza. Right, best, And you're after
Speaker 1: a while you're like, okay, yes, you know, Luigi's is
Speaker 1: the best pizza. In down done, you win, you win.
Speaker 1: You're like, fine, and make it stop right In what
Speaker 1: we're you, it's like negative reinforcement is the reward that
Speaker 1: comes when you stop something bad from happening. It's like
Speaker 1: closing a window against the noise you're gonna keep. Next time,
Speaker 1: you'll close the window again. Same thing here. And although
Speaker 1: it's a silly example, we do this stuff with toxic
Speaker 1: people all the time. The difference is the unique element,
Speaker 1: this unique aspect of this relationship with Larry is that
Speaker 1: he was insisting on these horrifying things being true.
Speaker 2: You would relent.
Speaker 1: Daniel shared something very similar of just making stuff up
Speaker 1: to make it stop. But then he would revisit it
Speaker 1: and he would be able to plausibly say, but you
Speaker 1: said just slept with your math teacher.
Speaker 3: And then so you said you slept with your math teacher.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, did you lie to me? How could
Speaker 3: you lie to me?
Speaker 2: Bingo? That's it.
Speaker 3: Either way, you can't win.
Speaker 1: And I've said this, Felicia, I've written it, I've said it,
Speaker 1: i've preached it, I've drawn it. Is that you can
Speaker 1: never win. It is the hallmark of any toxic relationship
Speaker 1: with a narcissistic, psychopathic, manipulative person. You give into everything
Speaker 1: they say. That's not winning, that's just getting this person
Speaker 1: out of your way. The vast majority of manipulative, narcissistic
Speaker 1: toxic people are not trying to do what he was doing,
Speaker 1: which was to have you fully under his psychological control.
Speaker 1: In most of these relationships, the person just wants to
Speaker 1: get their way and maintain some level of control and
Speaker 1: just want their lives to be convenient. So obviously what
Speaker 1: you experienced was far far more pronounced.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, But the challenging thing is is that it's
Speaker 1: subtle and it's a million small things, and in this
Speaker 1: case it was so unrelenting. Most of us in these
Speaker 1: scenarios will say, okay, fine, yeah, sure, I did this thing,
Speaker 1: and you think it's done. What we don't bank on
Speaker 1: is that this is going to come back and bite us,
Speaker 1: which is what happened to you. Now as this is
Speaker 1: going on, though you're still not seeing it, you're still thinking,
Speaker 1: I'm in a relationship with this person, I'm involved with
Speaker 1: this person. And you were in California, he was in
Speaker 1: New York. Can you talk to us about that transition
Speaker 1: from California to New York for you, So.
Speaker 3: Going from California back to New York, that was probably
Speaker 3: one of the worst experiences of my life, including being
Speaker 3: with him. But this was really harrowing. He sorry, I
Speaker 3: just it comes flooding back whenever you ask, but it's okay.
Speaker 3: So he just kept escalating as time went on, right,
Speaker 3: and then he kept pressuring me, trying to get me
Speaker 3: to admit to things that I didn't do, trying to
Speaker 3: get me to have sex with people with strangers and
Speaker 3: record it to send it to him. And I had
Speaker 3: come to visit a few times. Larry is exceptionally extravagant,
Speaker 3: and so the few times that I did come to visit,
Speaker 3: we stated at the Plaza, at the Waldorf and then
Speaker 3: at the Carlisle. It's like these ridiculous hotels. I'm not
Speaker 3: that kind of person. One of those times he had
Speaker 3: a business meeting. I met the person that he was
Speaker 3: working with, and she asked him to help her with
Speaker 3: her divorce. So he did all this work for her.
Speaker 3: We go out to dinner with her, and then we
Speaker 3: leave dinner. Next day he starts accusing me of destroying
Speaker 3: the deal with this woman, that now he's not going
Speaker 3: to get paid for all the work that he did,
Speaker 3: and that I made him lose a million dollars. I
Speaker 3: was like, what are you talking about. He always carried
Speaker 3: around like tens of thousands of dollars in a backpack
Speaker 3: cash anyways, So he says that while he was sleeping,
Speaker 3: I stole money from him, like one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 3: So he's already been wearing me down, and this was
Speaker 3: what over now ten months. I'm doing well at work actually,
Speaker 3: but he is wearing me down in my personal life,
Speaker 3: and I'm worried that I did something that I don't
Speaker 3: remember at this point, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: I made him lose money. Oh my god, I stole money,
Speaker 3: but I don't have it. What happened the week before that,
Speaker 3: I told him that I was going to apply for
Speaker 3: my state medical license. I was about to take my
Speaker 3: exam and I was about to get my license. So
Speaker 3: he decides to lay into me after I tell him that,
Speaker 3: and he gets me extra paranoid. I start to think
Speaker 3: that people are coming after me, that people are surrounding
Speaker 3: my apartment, that people are trying to kill me, that
Speaker 3: I was terrified I couldn't go to work, and he
Speaker 3: was just gaslighting me for hours and hours. He would say, well,
Speaker 3: you you're wasting my time, like you're saying that you're upset,
Speaker 3: and like you're probably lying. I thought you're sleeping with
Speaker 3: somebody right now, and you're not actually worried about somebody
Speaker 3: trying to kill you, and you stole money from me.
Speaker 3: I'm going to come after you. I'm going to sue you.
Speaker 3: And I'm on the other end crying. You can hear me, like,
Speaker 3: because he recorded all of this, So I actually still
Speaker 3: have the recording of this conversation.
Speaker 1: Who was recording these conversations because he's so he's recording everything.
Speaker 3: I was recording everything. He was recording all the conversations.
Speaker 3: I didn't know. I was not aware of this at all.
Speaker 3: He wanted to record me saying that I did hurtful
Speaker 3: things to him, that I had cheated on him, or
Speaker 3: that I had stolen from him, you know, because it
Speaker 3: would get to that point that I would just submit
Speaker 3: whatever or it was he was alleging that I did,
Speaker 3: so then he would have the recording that, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you said this, and I have proof that you said
Speaker 3: it because you said it on this day, and I
Speaker 3: have the recording. I mean, and it was in just hours,
Speaker 3: like it was days. He sent me to Best Buy
Speaker 3: to get cameras and stold my apartment so that he
Speaker 3: could see me from New York, see me in my
Speaker 3: apartment and watch me sleep. Even at best Buy when
Speaker 3: I went to get the cameras, he was trying to
Speaker 3: get me to have sex with the workers at best Buy.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, Like, I am terrified for my life
Speaker 3: and you're trying to get me to have sex with
Speaker 3: people like that much. I was able to fight back on,
Speaker 3: to push back on, but then eventually, you know, I
Speaker 3: was so distraught. He's like, well, you know, you need
Speaker 3: to just come back to New York. This is after
Speaker 3: seventy two hours of this. I'm like, okay, yeah, I
Speaker 3: can't take it.
Speaker 1: My conversation will continue after this break. So, Felicia, in
Speaker 1: these seventy two hours, in these days, he is telling
Speaker 1: you that there are people who are trying to harm you,
Speaker 1: consistently telling you this, and it's adding up to a
Speaker 1: plausible narrative.
Speaker 3: It's plausible in the state that I was in, the
Speaker 3: mental state that I was in, Yeah, it made sense
Speaker 3: to me, and I was terrified and I really believed
Speaker 3: that people were coming after me, that people were trying
Speaker 3: to kill me.
Speaker 2: So that's what I'm saying. It's plausible, Felicia.
Speaker 1: He has this sort of storied past, so it's not
Speaker 1: beyond the paale that someone from his past could have
Speaker 1: been seeking vindication. It feels a little cinematic, but it's
Speaker 1: not beyond the paal. He keeps telling you, keeps telling you.
Speaker 1: He's selling it to you. You care about him, so
Speaker 1: there's some buy in. You believe him. He keeps going
Speaker 1: and going. He doubles down and he triples down, and
Speaker 1: it's almost like this hook is working, because it does
Speaker 1: feel with him that he was dropping multiple lines in
Speaker 1: the water. Felicia, let me see if I can get
Speaker 1: her to admit to, you know, wanting to sleep with
Speaker 1: the best buy guy, or let me see if I
Speaker 1: can get her admit to this, admit to that. What
Speaker 1: kind of collateral can I get from her to use
Speaker 1: against her down the road. And then he started a
Speaker 1: new tactic, let me tell her that she is at risk.
Speaker 1: Like it does almost feel like he had a big
Speaker 1: psychopathic bag of tricks and he was digging into it
Speaker 1: because of who you are. Some of the tricks weren't working,
Speaker 1: so he switched up his game. And escalation is always
Speaker 1: what we see in this coercive and malignant relationship. But
Speaker 1: it's not only just escalation it's trying different things. This
Speaker 1: one was working right exactly.
Speaker 3: Yes, And you're totally right because of the person that
Speaker 3: I am. I didn't go along with a lot of
Speaker 3: the things that he was trying to get me to
Speaker 3: do that he did get others to do. Yes, I
Speaker 3: just wasn't working. And going back to what you were
Speaker 3: saying about how they play both sides of the coin, right,
Speaker 3: So I'm about to get my medical license, and then
Speaker 3: he decides then to start this attack, this assault. I'm
Speaker 3: about to be independent, a full fledged doctor, but he
Speaker 3: wants to break me and fix me. So he's going
Speaker 3: to break me right before like the critical point where
Speaker 3: that's going to make me a doctor. Then he has
Speaker 3: that carot, which is a giant carrot, my career, my future,
Speaker 3: my dream of helping people, right, and then if he
Speaker 3: manages to quote fix me right, get me back to work,
Speaker 3: get me back to medicine, then I owe my career
Speaker 3: to him. Then I owe my whole life to it.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's so telling.
Speaker 1: You know, that's something I didn't understand, and that's a
Speaker 1: really important observation because you're absolutely right, he was sapping
Speaker 1: her autonomy because that final exam was going to be
Speaker 1: the exam and that then would allow you to independently
Speaker 1: write prescriptions. It was a critical professional ledge and it
Speaker 1: speaks to how studious. I hate using that word, but
Speaker 1: how studied. Somebody with a psychopathic personality style is about
Speaker 1: taking in all the data on a person and literally
Speaker 1: it's like setting a precise trap. This is not randomly
Speaker 1: like I'm just going to mess with someone's head. It
Speaker 1: is calculated, it is careful. This is why in the
Speaker 1: literature traditionally psychopathic people have always been characterized as quite intelligent.
Speaker 1: You have to be smart to be able to draw
Speaker 1: this big circle and say, well this, then this, and
Speaker 1: if I get her right there, and if I do this,
Speaker 1: then that, and how can I figure out what Felicia's
Speaker 1: sort of vulnerability is? And then he found it in
Speaker 1: this sort of creating this fear that someone would be
Speaker 1: out to harm you. And it even sounds like in
Speaker 1: his storytelling he was even harnessing the plausibility that your
Speaker 1: parents could have been involved in this too.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, he definitely did. He started early on. He
Speaker 3: knew how important my family was to me. My parents,
Speaker 3: my siblings are the most dear people to my heart.
Speaker 3: So he held all of those relationships hostage, and then
Speaker 3: he started to say that they were plotting against me,
Speaker 3: that they were trying to come after me, that all
Speaker 3: of them were trying to kill me. That was part
Speaker 3: of his method of isolating me, right, just breaking down
Speaker 3: the other relationships. But then I'm so invested in my
Speaker 3: family that if any threat to my family, I'll capitulate.
Speaker 3: Like if you tell me that if I do something,
Speaker 3: it's going to hurt my brother, my sister and my dad, like,
Speaker 3: I'm not going to do it. He was constantly threatening
Speaker 3: me with I'm going to send them to jail they
Speaker 3: hurt me, I'm going to make sure they never graduate.
Speaker 3: I'm going to get them to kill themselves.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know about this as well. It's coerce
Speaker 1: of control. This is coercive control, fear, intimidation, isolation, menace, manipulation,
Speaker 1: financial abuse, interruption of professional development, threatening harm to people
Speaker 1: you care about, and the only way to stop that
Speaker 1: harm is by giving into their requests. That's coersive control.
Speaker 1: That's what you are surviving. And I think that the
Speaker 1: piece people don't understand about course of control. It is
Speaker 1: as if not more insidious than physical violence. Physical violence
Speaker 1: is actually much more obvious in your face, and there's
Speaker 1: often bruises coercive control. Only recently felicia has been recognized
Speaker 1: as a form of emotional violence. And even then it's
Speaker 1: not a criminal violation. And as he mentally breaks you
Speaker 1: down and plays back your own voice saying that it is,
Speaker 1: there's the audio clip, and then you almost realize that
Speaker 1: I don't have a leg to stand on.
Speaker 3: The real kicker is that he recorded it to show
Speaker 3: it to the authorities. Yeah, that was his intention. He
Speaker 3: would threaten, Now I can show the government. Now I
Speaker 3: can take this to the FBI and show them how
Speaker 3: hurtful you've been to me, and you're gonna go to jail,
Speaker 3: and this is how I'm gonna get you put away
Speaker 3: for life. Yep. And so that's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it complete.
Speaker 2: I mean it is again that's the arrogance.
Speaker 3: Yes, he was so arrogant that he really thought that
Speaker 3: recording these things was proving the harm that was being
Speaker 3: done to him, when it was really capturing him hurting us,
Speaker 3: which is and in the irony is just so so great.
Speaker 1: I think that the other thing is that self victim
Speaker 1: put he was perpetually a victim in the means of
Speaker 1: his manipulation. And I will say just a sort of
Speaker 1: a sidebar about the backpack. We were chuckling about the backpack,
Speaker 1: but now in the greater schematic of who Larry is
Speaker 1: carrying a backpack full of tens of thousands of dollars
Speaker 1: or you're saying even hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, right,
Speaker 1: means that if some of it goes missing, it's believable, right,
Speaker 1: if you've a strange prop this backpack filled with cash.
Speaker 1: Actually it became a tool for him to continue this
Speaker 1: extorative approach to money is missing. I mean, you don't
Speaker 1: know how much money was in there. So he's like, listen,
Speaker 1: there was this many thousands of dollars before. Now there's
Speaker 1: only this much. You were the only one in the
Speaker 1: room with it. And he's been doing this stuff to
Speaker 1: you all along. It's not like that came out of
Speaker 1: the blue. I think that all of these, every single
Speaker 1: action he did was intentional. He was a predator in
Speaker 1: its clearest form, but using all these coercive techniques. So
Speaker 1: you move to New York, you're on the cusp of
Speaker 1: getting your medical license. What happens with the whole taking
Speaker 1: the exam and getting that license to practice.
Speaker 3: I'm kidding, I still haven't taken my exam. When it's
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, I'm nowhere closer to going back to being
Speaker 3: a doctor right now. I come back from New York.
Speaker 3: He sends a man, an armed man who he claims
Speaker 3: was a former federal agent, to come get me from
Speaker 3: my apartment and fly back with me to New York.
Speaker 3: He never leaves my side for months, actually, and I'm
Speaker 3: so distraught. He tries to get me to ask my
Speaker 3: parents for money. So by the time we actually move
Speaker 3: into the apartment, because that first month, we were staying
Speaker 3: at my parents' house. Actually, who was wee? Larry and I?
Speaker 1: You were living at your parents' house?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because that first month that I came back
Speaker 3: from California, I was so upset. I mean I was
Speaker 3: really just a mess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you were scared. You were scared.
Speaker 3: I was terrified, so that Larry thought it would be
Speaker 3: better if he stayed with me at my parents' house.
Speaker 2: What is your parents think of him?
Speaker 3: I mean they were thankful that there was somebody helping
Speaker 3: me because the way that he presented, you know, what
Speaker 3: had happened to me that I was something horrible happened
Speaker 3: to me in California. They were just happy that somebody
Speaker 3: was helping their daughter, right, and that had taken her
Speaker 3: out of the situation.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like Larry was using this month to
Speaker 1: start grooming your parents?
Speaker 3: Oh? Yeah, he vilified my father, and then my mother
Speaker 3: was good until he couldn't break her, and then she
Speaker 3: turned bad in his narrative.
Speaker 2: Oh, she turned bad in Larry's narrative.
Speaker 3: In Larry's narrative, So what he was trying to get
Speaker 3: us to think about or believe it was like, your
Speaker 3: dad is the bad one, your mom is a good one,
Speaker 3: and like, let's try to help your mom leave your dad.
Speaker 3: And when he couldn't get to my mom, then it's
Speaker 3: both of them are bad. You need to just walk
Speaker 3: away from him.
Speaker 1: So you know what's interesting is that your parents were
Speaker 1: able to be resistant to that. We wonder, like, why
Speaker 1: don't some people get fully sucked in? Right?
Speaker 2: And it can be any number of things.
Speaker 1: You were there for a month, he gets to know
Speaker 1: your parents, whatever sort of grooming process he was doing,
Speaker 1: trying to split them apart. Again, if he can triangulate
Speaker 1: like that, he would have had a lot more power
Speaker 1: in that system. Whatever he tried to do didn't work.
Speaker 1: So again always the dangling, multiple strategies, multiple hooks in
Speaker 1: the water. Now he realizes the strategy is, let's isolate
Speaker 1: her from them.
Speaker 2: They're not gettable.
Speaker 1: But being in their house for a month also let
Speaker 1: him know what kinds of resources they had, so if
Speaker 1: there was going to be a financial shakedown, he was
Speaker 1: well aware of what the house was worth, or did
Speaker 1: they own their home, or did cars or whatever, you know,
Speaker 1: fungible assets they had that he knew that It's always
Speaker 1: working some angle right.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yes, I'm certain that that's a huge part of
Speaker 3: what he was doing, that he wanted to profile, you know,
Speaker 3: living in their house, then he could profile them better.
Speaker 3: But I tried to go to the hospital, like tried
Speaker 3: to check myself in to the psych ward because I
Speaker 3: knew I wasn't okay. I knew something was really wrong.
Speaker 3: And I try to sneak away with my dad while
Speaker 3: he's sleeping, and he calls me right when I'm about
Speaker 3: to go in, and I turned around and like my
Speaker 3: future was over. I felt like I had to turn
Speaker 3: around and go back. Like once he woke up and
Speaker 3: I heard his voice, it was over for me. It
Speaker 3: didn't stop being bad, like since the moment I got
Speaker 3: back to New York and I didn't move to New York.
Speaker 3: I left with a backpack. I wasn't intending to just
Speaker 3: leave my job or you know, just like run away
Speaker 3: with my boyfriend. Like that is not my personality type,
Speaker 3: that is not my profile. I don't do that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. You said, he tripled down. He like quadrupled
Speaker 3: like quintupled down on what he was doing to me.
Speaker 3: He wouldn't leave me alone. I wasn't allowed to be alone.
Speaker 3: I wasn't allowed to go outside by myself. Someone else
Speaker 3: always had to go with me. Mind you, I am
Speaker 3: a thirty year old doctor and I need a college
Speaker 3: student to go with me across the street to get
Speaker 3: a bottle of water. And actually, sorry, this is one
Speaker 3: of the worst things that happened. Within the month of
Speaker 3: me getting back to New York, he decides he needs
Speaker 3: to go visit a business partner in Washington, DC, and
Speaker 3: he doesn't have a license because he can't get his
Speaker 3: act together and actually get a new driver's license. I
Speaker 3: think that was very intentional, right, so you would always
Speaker 3: have someone driving him. But either way, I was the
Speaker 3: one who had to drive us to Washington, and the
Speaker 3: whole way down he was yelling at me, calling me names.
Speaker 3: He even hit me in the head, like punched me
Speaker 3: in the head while I was driving. He called my
Speaker 3: brother to get my brother to say he wanted me
Speaker 3: to die, that my brother wanted me to die. He
Speaker 3: started a whole fight, and within a few days of
Speaker 3: us being in Washington, I tried to kill myself. I'm
Speaker 3: so sorry I overdosed on Tyler Knoll and he made
Speaker 3: me feel so guilty. He made me feel like such
Speaker 3: a bad person for everything that I had quote done
Speaker 3: to him, stealing from him, cheating on him, that my
Speaker 3: family it was all a bunch of criminals that everyone
Speaker 3: was trying to kill Larry and you know, and they're
Speaker 3: my family, and that makes me a bad person. I mean,
Speaker 3: he laid it on every which way that he could.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean I ended up overdosing. I thankfully,
Speaker 3: once I started getting toxic, I changed my mind, but
Speaker 3: it was too late, right kind of had a like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, I don't want to die. Thankfully, the
Speaker 3: police find me and then they take me to the hospital.
Speaker 3: But what made that whole experience even worse was So
Speaker 3: he talks to the psychiatrist, He talks to the residents,
Speaker 3: and he tells them a whole story about why I
Speaker 3: had the suicide chempt. It was about my mother and
Speaker 3: me hating my mom. And then he talks to the
Speaker 3: attending and then decides. He says, well, this is going
Speaker 3: to ruin your career, he tells me, and I'm in
Speaker 3: the hospital like just recovering, I'll never be a doctor
Speaker 3: again if you stay here. We need to get you
Speaker 3: out of the hospital. So we leave, and then he
Speaker 3: holds this whole episode over my head for the rest
Speaker 3: of the time.
Speaker 2: What does that look like holding it over your head?
Speaker 3: So he would say if I tried to go back
Speaker 3: to work and he didn't approve of whatever I was doing,
Speaker 3: that he would report me to the medical board, that
Speaker 3: he make me lose my license, that he would get
Speaker 3: me blacklisted.
Speaker 2: Essentially, it's more of the coercive control.
Speaker 1: Once again, when you were in the hospital, was he
Speaker 1: talking to the medical professionals there.
Speaker 3: Yes, all of them. He talked to the residents, the
Speaker 3: er doctors, the psychiatrists, the head psychiatrist, the head of
Speaker 3: the department, the nurses, everyone, and he charmed everyone. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then he told them that I feel so bad
Speaker 3: for her. She has a really horrible childhood and she
Speaker 3: has abusive parents, and she's angry yet her mom, you know.
Speaker 3: And he paints his picture and I'm there lying in
Speaker 3: bed trying to just get my wits about me after
Speaker 3: having like almost died.
Speaker 1: It's kind of terrifying to me because this was recent.
Speaker 1: This didn't happened twenty thirty years ago. You and I
Speaker 1: both know if a woman is coming in this kind
Speaker 1: of reaction with a partner, one of the hypotheses that
Speaker 1: should be ruled out is domestic abuse. I see charming.
Speaker 1: I immediately say, Okay, we might have a real problem here.
Speaker 1: I really literally do it, rather than oh, how charming
Speaker 1: and helpful. That one of their differentials and hypotheses could
Speaker 1: very well have been relational abuse, and that there should
Speaker 1: have been the attempt to bring in other stakeholders.
Speaker 2: And all of that.
Speaker 1: I really want listeners to understand what you were up against.
Speaker 1: This person was so skilled in his psychopathy that he
Speaker 1: was tricking people who really should have known better.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, yeah, on a regular basis, it was without
Speaker 3: fail Like if Larry said he was going to a meeting.
Speaker 3: You knew that he was going to come out of
Speaker 3: their winning, and then people are like, well, why didn't
Speaker 3: you just leave? Why didn't you just walk away? How
Speaker 3: like how was I going to do that? How like?
Speaker 3: In what world was that going to be possible?
Speaker 1: You know, there are very few absolutes to me in
Speaker 1: the world of mental health. I'll tell you one absolute
Speaker 1: is you never ever ever ask a person why didn't
Speaker 1: you leave?
Speaker 2: We know why people don't leave.
Speaker 1: You are completely alone. You are in a psychiatric hospital
Speaker 1: in a city you don't live in, several hundred miles
Speaker 1: away from the city you do live in, and thousands
Speaker 1: of miles away from the city that is your new home,
Speaker 1: having a very very acute psychiatric stress reaction to what
Speaker 1: you're being subjected to, and the world keeps falling from
Speaker 1: for it. You've been fully isolated from everyone.
Speaker 3: You are alone, Yeah, absolutely, completely alone, utterly like, well,
Speaker 3: who else? The only person left was Larry. He was
Speaker 3: the only one correct. The world burned down, you know,
Speaker 3: he burns down the world and you're the only one
Speaker 3: there to pick you up.
Speaker 1: And I'm glad you put it. It's not the world
Speaker 1: burned in Berlin. He burned the world down, and then
Speaker 1: he said, and look at you. I saved you from
Speaker 1: the burning world. And that's the horror of this. And
Speaker 1: this is the way this dynamic shows up every single time. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is more than usual, but at the same time,
Speaker 1: this is all happening. You're still living with the fear
Speaker 1: from California. You've driven him down to Washington. You're horrifically
Speaker 1: abused during that drive you have I would be an
Speaker 1: expectable reaction to all that's happening. How's your relationship at
Speaker 1: this point? And as you come back to New York
Speaker 1: with your brother and sister, are you all living in
Speaker 1: that apartment together with you know, your siblings and the
Speaker 1: people Larry.
Speaker 3: So when we come back, Santos and my sister are
Speaker 3: not living at the apartment. They've been spending a lot
Speaker 3: of time there, but the only people who were actually
Speaker 3: living there were Isabella and Daniel. Okay, but I was
Speaker 3: seeing my brother and my sister a lot. But our
Speaker 3: relationship was already getting very straight, and it was really
Speaker 3: at the whims of Larry, like if we were doing
Speaker 3: well or if we were not doing well, Like if
Speaker 3: Larry said that everything was good and life is happy,
Speaker 3: then everyone is happy. If Larry says that Sanchos is
Speaker 3: trying to kill you and he hates you, then we're
Speaker 3: not talking to him, right. And it was absolutely Larry's playground,
Speaker 3: whatever he wanted, whatever he thought of, that's what would happen. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I had no say or control and what was going
Speaker 3: on around me.
Speaker 2: You didn't.
Speaker 1: And you were all pieces on a chessboard, right. He
Speaker 1: was playing a game. He was moving the pieces around
Speaker 1: strategically as he saw fit.
Speaker 2: And you really had.
Speaker 1: Had your choice and your free will in many ways
Speaker 1: completely taken away in this situation. That's what coercive control does.
Speaker 1: So Isabella is living in that apartment. Can you talk
Speaker 1: to us about Isabella, the role she played in this,
Speaker 1: and more importantly, how that affected you.
Speaker 3: So Isabella is Talia's best friend from Sarah Lawrence. Isabella
Speaker 3: is the first person that Talia asks Larry to help.
Speaker 3: When Larry gets out of prison. He spends countless hours
Speaker 3: with her. One of their first conversations, or very early on,
Speaker 3: he MESSU spent between seventeen and twenty hours with her
Speaker 3: in a conversation. And I think she's nineteen at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's not a conversation.
Speaker 3: No, that's not a conversation. So eventually he ends up
Speaker 3: sleeping in her room and they start a relationship that
Speaker 3: they hide from everyone, including me. By the time I
Speaker 3: got to New York, Isabella was living in the apartment
Speaker 3: with Larry and with Daniel. Isabella and Larry slept together
Speaker 3: in the bedroom. He tried to tell everyone that he
Speaker 3: was quote helping her with her issues and she couldn't
Speaker 3: sleep by herself, that she would have night terrors and
Speaker 3: had all of these issues. That's not what was happening.
Speaker 3: And when I got there, I was coming back from Washington,
Speaker 3: DC after having tried to kill myself. When we go
Speaker 3: to go to sleep, he wants us all naked. He
Speaker 3: wants us all sleeping naked, and He's like no, and
Speaker 3: Isabella likes sleeping naked, like that's what she prefers. I
Speaker 3: was like, what where am I? But I'm not to
Speaker 3: say anything right or to do anything. And yeah, we
Speaker 3: would each sleep on one side and is involved with
Speaker 3: sleep with her hand on his generals. Sometimes I would
Speaker 3: wake up to her performing oral sex on Larry and
Speaker 3: mind you, Okay, I'm going to take just a little
Speaker 3: bit more context. I've never had sex with Larry, so
Speaker 3: he was my boyfriend. It was very platonic the whole time.
Speaker 1: The whole relationship, even from beginning to end.
Speaker 3: Never from beginning to end.
Speaker 2: Thank you for clarifying that.
Speaker 3: So never, like never, in all of the years that
Speaker 3: I was with him, I never had relations with him.
Speaker 3: There were times he had me try to like perform
Speaker 3: some oral sex on him, but I was so hurt
Speaker 3: that I just I was not capable of doing anything sexual,
Speaker 3: so that he would just give up and he's like,
Speaker 3: he was like, you suck at it, so like I'm
Speaker 3: just gonna go get Isabella.
Speaker 1: You know, a context is so important here because the depiction, frankly,
Speaker 1: is that you were his girlfriend, which would have then
Speaker 1: implied you were in a sexually intimate relationship.
Speaker 2: Any any sexual.
Speaker 1: Relationship you would have had, which I think many people
Speaker 1: assumed you did, would not have been consensual.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: You were in a coercively controlled relationship. Sex is not consensual,
Speaker 1: it can't be. What was happening was he wasn't forcing
Speaker 1: you into sexual acts. Instead, he was weaponizing it in
Speaker 1: a different way. He was using it as a place
Speaker 1: of degradation and humiliation and triangulation. But You've also given
Speaker 1: us tremendous context here, because this wasn't operating like a
Speaker 1: normal intimate relationship by any stretch of the imagination in
Speaker 1: any way.
Speaker 3: Absolutely not. No, he did totally weaponize it within the
Speaker 3: relationship because he said, no, if I have sex with you,
Speaker 3: it'll mess up your mind, and I want you thinking clearly.
Speaker 3: I want you to be more effective. You need to
Speaker 3: go have sex with all of these strangers and record
Speaker 3: it and to break free, to become a liberated woman
Speaker 3: right before I can have sex with you. So I
Speaker 3: mean there were times that I did actually end up
Speaker 3: doing that, because he sent Isabella to supervise and to
Speaker 3: make sure that I did, and to make sure that
Speaker 3: it was recorded, so he would have me having sex
Speaker 3: with strangers. From what I can remember, there are still
Speaker 3: lots of blanks in my memory. It didn't happen very often.
Speaker 3: I resisted regularly, and I think because of who I am,
Speaker 3: even in the traumatized state that I was in, him
Speaker 3: saying you need to go have sex with all these
Speaker 3: people before I can have sex with you, that was
Speaker 3: an incentive to me. I was like, okay, so that
Speaker 3: I'm not going to have sex with all those people,
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to have sex with you. But
Speaker 3: he did make me feel ugly, undesirable, unwanted, not lovable,
Speaker 3: try to have competition with Isabella. Oh she's sexy, Oh
Speaker 3: she's young, Oh she's naked, she likes to walk around
Speaker 3: scantily clad, And why don't you do that? Why don't
Speaker 3: you do your makeup? It took a couple of years
Speaker 3: for me to get a little bit of my mind back.
Speaker 3: I figured out that that's what he was doing, so
Speaker 3: I just did the opposite. So I didn't take care
Speaker 3: of my hair, I didn't wear makeup. I dress in
Speaker 3: baggy clothes and sweatpants and sweatshirts all day. I didn't
Speaker 3: look feminine. I didn't want to look attractive because if
Speaker 3: I looked attractive, then he would try to send me
Speaker 3: out to have sex with people, and then he would
Speaker 3: try to make the competition with Isabella, and I just
Speaker 3: didn't even want to engage. That was a way I
Speaker 3: think of my mind in survival mode, trying to protect
Speaker 3: me from more hurt.
Speaker 1: But what's fascinating, though, Felicia, is that means that a
Speaker 1: lot of his tactics aren't working right, because if this
Speaker 1: went down as one would think it would. This would
Speaker 1: have fostered a tremendous jealousy of you towards Isabella, because
Speaker 1: you perceive yourself as being in a relationship with him.
Speaker 1: But instead, what I'm hearing is that you actually didn't
Speaker 1: want to have sex with him. You were almost trying
Speaker 1: to sexualize yourself in any way, So you were not
Speaker 1: sent on these sorts of you know, coerced missions to
Speaker 1: go out there and be videotape having sexual relations to
Speaker 1: give him collateral, and you were disengaged, yet you were
Speaker 1: also stuck. You didn't feel you could leave, but you
Speaker 1: also weren't engaged in this relationship. Because of this, my
Speaker 1: question becomes was there any fear if Larry left it
Speaker 1: would be terrible for you? Like was he ever threatening
Speaker 1: abandonment or putting you out or.
Speaker 3: Oh yeahs like the end goal of our relationship that
Speaker 3: was the carot, So like me going back to work
Speaker 3: and being a full doctor and being successful and helping people,
Speaker 3: and then him doing something being successful in business and
Speaker 3: us being like a power couple. That was the fantasy
Speaker 3: that we were working towards. And then he would say,
Speaker 3: but we just have to do this one thing and
Speaker 3: we just have to get through this one, right. That
Speaker 3: was one context, and then he was like, let's help
Speaker 3: Isabella together. He would say, you know, if we were
Speaker 3: doing something, it would be for her sake. So he
Speaker 3: was trying to foster competition. But I leaned into the
Speaker 3: compassion for Isabella more and I was wanting to see
Speaker 3: her get better. I wasn't actually jealous, but he did
Speaker 3: try to foster competition, competition, but he set me up
Speaker 3: for failure constantly, so you know, if there was a task,
Speaker 3: he would give me something like basically impossible to do,
Speaker 3: or even if I accomplished it, he would say, well,
Speaker 3: Isabella would do it better.
Speaker 2: So she was a golden child.
Speaker 3: But I did care very much for him, and I
Speaker 3: tried to hang on to the Larry I met at
Speaker 3: the beginning, you know, the facade, but I didn't think
Speaker 3: it was a facade. I thought he was just I
Speaker 3: didn't even know what was going on. But I was
Speaker 3: trying to hang on to the idea of the Larry
Speaker 3: that I had.
Speaker 2: Met right right, right.
Speaker 3: So I was very attached to that Larry. And then
Speaker 3: he isolated me from everyone right, so effectively he was
Speaker 3: the only person in my life. He was the only
Speaker 3: one who was going to take care of me. He
Speaker 3: blocked all the doors, and so even if I didn't
Speaker 3: want to be there, I was physically, financially, emotionally, mentally
Speaker 3: attached to him. Right.
Speaker 1: Those are the coors of control dynamics. What is so
Speaker 1: important here, though, is that this person and you met
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the relationship, right whoever this was,
Speaker 1: what he represented was being present and seeing you and
Speaker 1: supporting you. When you're having a shoulder such a heavy
Speaker 1: burden and somebody even takes one thing off, it can
Speaker 1: create an almost instantaneous bond what I'd call sort of
Speaker 1: an over gratitude. Right, you're just living with no support,
Speaker 1: and one person even does something as I know, no
Speaker 1: gentle as doing the dishes in the sink, You're gonna
Speaker 1: be almost, you know, like overfawning.
Speaker 2: Like, oh my god, you did my dishes.
Speaker 1: And it's too much like they did the dishes, like
Speaker 1: they didn't, you know, cure your incurable illness or something.
Speaker 1: But that what he did, and this what he didn't
Speaker 1: wasn't insignificant like doing dishes. He actually got in there
Speaker 1: and helped your brother, helped your sister. Parents liked him,
Speaker 1: all that stuff happened in the beginning, but he lightened
Speaker 1: your load. That's who you wanted back. And what I'm
Speaker 1: not hearing is that it was romanticized and it didn't
Speaker 1: turn into a sexual relationship. I mean, sex was weaponized
Speaker 1: in this space, but not in the way we traditionally think.
Speaker 2: But there's this other thing.
Speaker 1: Too, he would say, once we get through this one thing,
Speaker 1: once we get through this one thing, there's that future faking.
Speaker 1: There's not a relationship like this where we have never
Speaker 1: not talked about future faking. After this, after this, after this, because,
Speaker 1: like you said, the buy in for you, interestingly, was
Speaker 1: you getting to that professional endgame. Your original identity I
Speaker 1: want to succeed professionally was always operating.
Speaker 2: He was playing on that.
Speaker 1: But the idea of him leaving you was terrifying because
Speaker 1: you had become so dependent on him, which is every
Speaker 1: coercively controlled relationship. This is why people need to understand
Speaker 1: coercive control. This is why people don't leave. Coercive control
Speaker 1: is like having one hundred chains locking you to one
Speaker 1: hundred locks, even when the room is full of doors.
Speaker 1: And that's what people don't understand.
Speaker 3: So some of that context of that was he's threatening
Speaker 3: to leave me, but then he says, if I leave you,
Speaker 3: I'm going to get you arrested and you're gonna sit
Speaker 3: in county jail, and I know one's going to come
Speaker 3: help you. If you try to go get help at
Speaker 3: the psychiatric hospital, I will never go visit you. I
Speaker 3: will never see you, I will never talk to you again.
Speaker 3: So what are the options? If I leave, he will
Speaker 3: get me arrested. If I try to go to the hospital,
Speaker 3: he'll never talk to me again, and also sue me
Speaker 3: and try to get me arrested after I get out
Speaker 3: of the hospital. So just it's what you're saying, all
Speaker 3: of the chains and all of the locks, and like, okay,
Speaker 3: so what am I supposed to do?
Speaker 2: There's nothing you can do.
Speaker 3: Your suck, right, He's the only one who can quote
Speaker 3: fix all of this, or at least that's what I
Speaker 3: thought at the time.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you would have become a doctor without him.
Speaker 1: All of the work you had done for years in
Speaker 1: high school, university, medical school, all of that you did
Speaker 1: that without him. What he did in how he manipulated
Speaker 1: you in the relationship was he convinced you that you
Speaker 1: needed him, And that's where you got stuck. Some of
Speaker 1: the sequences in the documentary that really I found heartbreaking
Speaker 1: was you were like digging ditches for drainage and overseeing
Speaker 1: all of these sorts of menial labor tasks. Are you
Speaker 1: able to think back to that time when you were
Speaker 1: doing what I can only call is physical labor.
Speaker 3: Oh? Yes, he says, Let's go help Gordon, his stepdad.
Speaker 3: Let's go help fix up his house. He's gonna really
Speaker 3: like it, and he's elderly and he's been having a
Speaker 3: hard time. Let's go help him. So we're going back
Speaker 3: and forth from North Carolina and we stay there for
Speaker 3: months at a time. There was so much of that
Speaker 3: time either one I don't remember or two I was incoherent,
Speaker 3: Like there was a lot of that time that I mean,
Speaker 3: I remember a little bit of just walking that I
Speaker 3: would spend all day walking around, like singing little songs
Speaker 3: like I used to say, I love you, Larry, I
Speaker 3: want to get married, because that was one of the
Speaker 3: things I would appease him. I regress significantly while I
Speaker 3: was there doing that physical labor. Parts of me were
Speaker 3: still present, like the analytical part of me, but in
Speaker 3: a weird way, in a backwards way. The yard work
Speaker 3: gave me purpose because at that point he had taken
Speaker 3: away everything else that was a meaning to me. I
Speaker 3: couldn't be a doctor. I didn't have my family, my friends,
Speaker 3: I couldn't work, I couldn't do anything that I wanted,
Speaker 3: anything that mattered to me. So it gave me something
Speaker 3: to do, something to apply myself to, Like I would
Speaker 3: rather lay down sod multiple times a day, day and
Speaker 3: night than go out to Walmart to try to have That's.
Speaker 1: What somebody, yeah, with the spectrum of survival strategies, you know,
Speaker 1: it's because that's all this was, right. It's survival is
Speaker 1: that you were a It speaks to how much you
Speaker 1: know human activity matters to us. Right to be able
Speaker 1: to do something that still mattered to you. And so
Speaker 1: in that task, you were still trying to find some meaning,
Speaker 1: some purpose, some focus. But you said you didn't have
Speaker 1: your family.
Speaker 3: What do you mean right, Because by then there was
Speaker 3: already the narrative that my parents were trying to get
Speaker 3: my brother and my sister to try to kill me
Speaker 3: and Larry and Talia. So I didn't feel safe with
Speaker 3: my family.
Speaker 2: At that point. Still talking with them, I guess I.
Speaker 3: Was minimally talking to them, because at that point I
Speaker 3: didn't even have a phone anymore. You had smashed the
Speaker 3: phone the hammer, and I was in North Carolina. My
Speaker 3: family was all in New.
Speaker 1: York, including your siblings. Your siblings didn't come to North Carolina.
Speaker 3: They came periodically. Got it one of his projects while
Speaker 3: we were in North Carolina to really pit us against
Speaker 3: each So he made chaos, that's the best way to
Speaker 3: put it. He just created this web of chaos for
Speaker 3: everyone around. There was no sense of stability.
Speaker 1: It was all very very carefully orchestrated. But at some point,
Speaker 1: your brother does decide to leave the dynamic with Larry,
Speaker 1: does your sister do the same?
Speaker 3: Yes, So my brother leaves runs away in December of
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen. And then my sister, she had spent significantly
Speaker 3: less time in the apartment because she was actually still
Speaker 3: at Columbia. Then at some point she took a year
Speaker 3: off because school had gone to be too much and
Speaker 3: we're all carrying a lot of grief and like we
Speaker 3: had a lot of undealt with family, you know, dynamics
Speaker 3: that were really difficult for all of us. So she
Speaker 3: was going through her own journey and then Larry started
Speaker 3: to help her. She was getting better, but like you
Speaker 3: were saying, just he would help somebody get better and
Speaker 3: then he would throw them right back into the fire.
Speaker 3: So he had her oscillating and she ended up cycling
Speaker 3: like in and out of hospitals for a few years.
Speaker 3: We would go to the hospital. He would say, tell
Speaker 3: everybody you're a doctor, tell everybody you're a psychiatrist. And
Speaker 3: then he wanted my sister discharged us, and I was like,
Speaker 3: no way, Like I mean, I didn't want her in
Speaker 3: the house because of how we were living. And then separately,
Speaker 3: there was also this stuff in the background that he
Speaker 3: was trying to instill in me, that she was trying
Speaker 3: to kill me, that she was trying to hurt me.
Speaker 3: So I was like, no, I don't want her to
Speaker 3: come home with us. So the last time I saw
Speaker 3: her was in twenty sixteen, after she had graduated from Columbia.
Speaker 3: Something else that we don't really talk about, this ordeal
Speaker 3: with Larry is just like a giant onion that they're
Speaker 3: just all of these layers of abuse. Once you start
Speaker 3: peeling them back, it's just like it just like never ending.
Speaker 3: But he got all of us suicidal and you know,
Speaker 3: I know this is a sensitive topic, but this is
Speaker 3: one of the things that I get very emotional about it,
Speaker 3: and I'm very passionate about it because this makes him
Speaker 3: that much more evil because he literally did play with
Speaker 3: our lives, and so when he would say I'm going
Speaker 3: to get you to kill yourself, like he wasn't kidding,
Speaker 3: very certain that if he hadn't been around, none of
Speaker 3: us would have had any And that makes him so
Speaker 3: much more evil. He wasn't just trying to like, you know,
Speaker 3: destroy a reputation or destroy you financially, or even like
Speaker 3: physical abuse. No, if like he wanted you to die,
Speaker 3: he would tell us, He's like, it would be so
Speaker 3: great if the two of you just held hands and
Speaker 3: just open that window over there. We were on the
Speaker 3: fifteenth floor. She just opened that window and jumped. That
Speaker 3: would make me so happy if the two of you
Speaker 3: did that.
Speaker 1: We will be right back with this conversation.
Speaker 3: We did actually end up having suicide attempts, and some
Speaker 3: of them very severe. You know, my sister almost died
Speaker 3: many times. Thankful that she was able to get away
Speaker 3: and leave.
Speaker 1: It is a miracle all of you survived. It really
Speaker 1: is the hopelessness that people feel and coercively controlling, exploitative relationships,
Speaker 1: it is not unusual for a person to end their life.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, Felicia. The way we collect statistics,
Speaker 1: we registered the loss of life. Sometimes it's even not
Speaker 1: recorded as a suicide, accidental this or something like that.
Speaker 1: But even when it's recorded as death by suicide, what
Speaker 1: we don't look at is what the contributors were. And
Speaker 1: generally we view it as some sort of internal phenomenon.
Speaker 1: The person was depressed, the person was stressed, the person
Speaker 1: was going through something. But where we don't trace the
Speaker 1: line out to was what was happening in their life.
Speaker 1: And when I have talked with advocates who have work
Speaker 1: with people going through coercively controlling relationships, especially within the
Speaker 1: context when these are marital relationships and it's a complex
Speaker 1: divorce and the children and all of that, And these
Speaker 1: advocates have told me the number of people they see
Speaker 1: whose lives are ending, and they know it really directly
Speaker 1: tracks back. But we're not getting those statistics that way,
Speaker 1: so we're not talking about it. In the case of
Speaker 1: Larry Rays, with one person, I couldn't agree with you
Speaker 1: more in a way, this is a form of committing
Speaker 1: murder right, and it's a way of committing murder that
Speaker 1: he will get away with because this coerced suicide to me.
Speaker 2: Is a murder. It is.
Speaker 1: It's a homicide as far as I'm concerned. But no way,
Speaker 1: no court in any land would ever see that. They
Speaker 1: would see someone, Oh they're having a mental illness, they're
Speaker 1: having this, they overdose whatever, and they would make it
Speaker 1: about that. But when we miss that, we miss a
Speaker 1: much larger public health issue here, that when you get
Speaker 1: to this level psychopathy, manipulation, coercion in a relationship, that
Speaker 1: things can get to this point where a person is
Speaker 1: so in the survival mindset that you can be coerced
Speaker 1: to that point or in sync with that is the
Speaker 1: absolute hopelessness. You are screaming out loud and no one
Speaker 1: can hear the scream coming out of your mouth. Therapists
Speaker 1: aren't identifying it, law enforcement isn't identifying it, domestic violence
Speaker 1: isn't recognizing it. No one is recognizing this. And so
Speaker 1: your sister, Yolyzia gets out, Santos gets out. Felicia though
Speaker 1: it is sort of still in this web with him.
Speaker 1: I fully understand this. I'm not even looking at you,
Speaker 1: perplexed at all. You were there and we were there
Speaker 1: when the FBI raided the house. Can you talk about
Speaker 1: what your experience of that was.
Speaker 3: So when the FBI raided the house, I was terrified.
Speaker 3: They stormed the house like five or six in the morning,
Speaker 3: It was pitch dark. There were two dozen agents like
Speaker 3: surrounding the house, and then they shuttled me off back
Speaker 3: to my room and I didn't get to see Larry
Speaker 3: again until maybe like midday when they finally took him out.
Speaker 3: So after five six hours of being interviewed by the
Speaker 3: agents and the police, then they took him away in handcuffs,
Speaker 3: and that was the last time I actually saw him.
Speaker 3: And I was terrified because while they were asking me questions,
Speaker 3: like he always threatened us with the police. He always
Speaker 3: threatened us with the FBI. So it was like, you
Speaker 3: can't lie to the police. It's a federal offense. You know.
Speaker 3: That fear was very well instilled in me. So when
Speaker 3: they came and they were asking me questions about what
Speaker 3: had happened, I'm like, well, I can't lie to them.
Speaker 3: I'm going to go to jail if I lie. So
Speaker 3: then I answered honestly and I was terrified because I
Speaker 3: was afraid of what Larry was going to do. I
Speaker 3: was still afraid of what he was going to do,
Speaker 3: even though they were already there and had got him,
Speaker 3: and I was afraid of what was going to happen.
Speaker 3: Now I see it now, I'm just like, this was
Speaker 3: one of the greatest days, of course, of my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you're not going to know that at the time.
Speaker 3: No, Yeah, absolutely, I was terrified. And then after they left,
Speaker 3: Isabella comes to me, She's like, did you tell them, Like,
Speaker 3: did you say anything? I was like no, because then
Speaker 3: I was afraid of Isabella because Isabella was a mini Larry. Yes,
Speaker 3: by that point, she was just really bad.
Speaker 1: When Larry was first arrested, did you feel the need
Speaker 1: to defend him, Yes.
Speaker 3: I still thought that he was going to win or prevail,
Speaker 3: because that's what he would talk about. But I was
Speaker 3: afraid of what he would do if I turned on
Speaker 3: him on the outside. And I was afraid of Isabella.
Speaker 2: Okay, I was.
Speaker 3: Afraid of his family because also at that point, since
Speaker 3: I didn't have a family, My family was Isabella was Talia,
Speaker 3: was Gordon, and Poppy his biological dad. If I said
Speaker 3: anything negative about Larry. Then I was bad I would
Speaker 3: be perceived as the enemy. So yeah, I did feel
Speaker 3: the need to defend him and to try to be helpful.
Speaker 3: The other part of me, though, was acknowledging reality, like
Speaker 3: I knew that my life was horrible with him, and
Speaker 3: then when the article came out, that was a big
Speaker 3: shock and that shook everything up and that really got
Speaker 3: things moving. But he wanted us all to help him
Speaker 3: fight the article, to get him a defamation lawyer to
Speaker 3: write into the magazine and say this is all lies,
Speaker 3: and you know, kind of do to like testimonial type
Speaker 3: stuff to try to, you know, speak on his behalf.
Speaker 3: But then I was sitting there, I'm like, well, what
Speaker 3: am I going to say? Has Larry actually been good
Speaker 3: for me? No? Like, I'm not working, I've had multiple
Speaker 3: suicide attempts, I have no family, no friends, Like I'm
Speaker 3: nowhere close to where I wanted to be in life.
Speaker 3: When I read the article, I was like, Wow, they
Speaker 3: did a good job. All the stories with Daniel that
Speaker 3: was there for them, Like I knew that they were true,
Speaker 3: and Larry was trying to say that they weren't. So
Speaker 3: I was conflicted because I'm supposed to be on his side,
Speaker 3: but it's true what he did to everyone. As I
Speaker 3: had more time away from him, I was able to
Speaker 3: see more.
Speaker 1: You have This arrest happened and also gives us some
Speaker 1: clarity on Isabella. She was treated differently and she was
Speaker 1: also a perpetrator within the system. It's very, very, very complicated.
Speaker 1: So you did ultimately cut ties though with Isabella. How
Speaker 1: did that go down.
Speaker 3: When the raid happened. I was completely and utterly dependent
Speaker 3: on Larry. So once Larry was gone, I had no job,
Speaker 3: I had no source of income, I had no one
Speaker 3: to turn to, and I had to start figuring out life,
Speaker 3: how to fend for myself after not having been allowed
Speaker 3: to do that for eight years. Thankfully, my brother had
Speaker 3: come back around and he helped me to some degree financially,
Speaker 3: which was just I didn't even want to take it
Speaker 3: at first because I was so scared, because I was
Speaker 3: still dealing with the Larry brain of being afraid of
Speaker 3: everyone but Isabella. I was really trying to move forward,
Speaker 3: and I was really trying to get a job. I
Speaker 3: mean I couldn't get a regular job like in an office.
Speaker 3: Then the pandemic happened, all I could get was working
Speaker 3: for Instacart and doing DoorDash. That's all I could do
Speaker 3: to support myself. And she would make fun of me,
Speaker 3: and she actually even made fun of me for trying
Speaker 3: to go work at Amazon. But I was really trying
Speaker 3: to actually move forward. And I think because she knew
Speaker 3: she had done all of these horrible things that she
Speaker 3: was going to be indicted soon, but she just didn't
Speaker 3: know when. But she didn't say that to me at
Speaker 3: the time. She was really mean, she was really abusive.
Speaker 3: I started to get space. The pandemic actually really helped
Speaker 3: me remember who I was and remember my purpose because
Speaker 3: I was a doctor. Where I am a doctor, but
Speaker 3: an unlicensed doctor, and there's a global pandemic and I'm
Speaker 3: sitting at home, like healthy, capable person, but I don't
Speaker 3: have a license, so I can't help anyone, and people
Speaker 3: are dying. And it was heartbreaking for me to know
Speaker 3: that I was trained that I could do something, but
Speaker 3: I couldn't. So having that contrast and like just having
Speaker 3: that world crisis reminded me it's like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: I am a doctor, I am capable, I am competent.
Speaker 3: But then it was like, but wait, you're not and
Speaker 3: then why are you not because of Larry? And you're
Speaker 3: not a doctor now because of Larry. So I tried.
Speaker 3: I went volunteered to the Morgue. I got to work,
Speaker 3: and I started to talk to other people, you know,
Speaker 3: because when I went to work at the Morgue, met
Speaker 3: new people, like made new friends, and I was able
Speaker 3: to interact with people outside of Larry. So when Isabella
Speaker 3: tried to bully me, or I was barely talking to Santos,
Speaker 3: I didn't know if my sister was alive. I didn't
Speaker 3: know if my parents were alive. She would yell at
Speaker 3: me and accuse me of trying to get the police
Speaker 3: to the house to get her in trouble. And as
Speaker 3: much as I wanted to be there for her, she
Speaker 3: made it so that I couldn't because as much as
Speaker 3: he tried to instill competition and everything like, I still
Speaker 3: care about her. I lived with her every day for
Speaker 3: almost ten years. But it happens with loved ones when
Speaker 3: going through their own thing, you can't always be the
Speaker 3: one to help them.
Speaker 1: It is quite remarkable that you were able to hold
Speaker 1: that pathic position on her. How much time elapsed between
Speaker 1: the raid and his arrest and the actual trial beginning
Speaker 1: two years. Okay, it's a long time. So in those years,
Speaker 1: what was your process of healing like?
Speaker 3: So in those two years since he got arrested, the
Speaker 3: first few months were really me still being on team Leary.
Speaker 3: But then very soon after he got arrested, when we
Speaker 3: went to meet with the federal defenders that were his lawyers,
Speaker 3: Marnie was very clear that we each needed our own representation,
Speaker 3: So engaging the attorneys was really a turning point. Talking
Speaker 3: about what happened has been one of the most powerful
Speaker 3: things that I've done to heal, between the therapists, the
Speaker 3: lawyers of the documentary, being able to talk about what happened,
Speaker 3: but not just speak about it. It's the connection. The
Speaker 3: human contact of being seen and heard, you know, was
Speaker 3: the complete opposite of what I had been experiencing before.
Speaker 3: That did a huge amount for me as far as
Speaker 3: healing goes, because it reminded me that no, I am
Speaker 3: a person, I am a human being, and people are safe,
Speaker 3: people aren't trying to kill me. The world isn't what
Speaker 3: Larry said it was, and that was incredibly powerful. But
Speaker 3: also I drove all day for work, and because I
Speaker 3: was alone all the time, and I was thinking about
Speaker 3: Larry all the time. I would have imaginary fights with
Speaker 3: Larry in my head all day, right, and I almost
Speaker 3: totaled my car many, like over a dozen times, And
Speaker 3: it was so scary to me. I was like, I'm
Speaker 3: literally going to die if I don't deal with this,
Speaker 3: If I don't figure out what happened and what's going
Speaker 3: on in my head right now, I'm going to die.
Speaker 3: So I went all in. I mean, I tried. I
Speaker 3: looked up as much as I could, I read as
Speaker 3: much as I could. I was super open with my
Speaker 3: lawyers and my social worker. But you know, the only
Speaker 3: way I was going to get better was if I
Speaker 3: was completely and utterly honest with myself and with whoever
Speaker 3: I talked to about what was going on. I wasn't
Speaker 3: going to get anywhere by telling a lie. As I
Speaker 3: was coming out of this, I was so ashamed, so embarrassed.
Speaker 3: How could I let this happen? How could I let
Speaker 3: this happen to me? Like, I'm so smart, I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to be so educated, you know, I'm supposed to be
Speaker 3: a psychiatrist. How could this happen to me? I judge
Speaker 3: myself so harshly that then the reflex is to try
Speaker 3: to not feel bad about myself, right and then lie.
Speaker 3: But that wasn't going to help me heal at the beginning.
Speaker 3: You know, when I would meet new people, they would
Speaker 3: ask me, oh, so, what's your story? And then I
Speaker 3: would I would have to make up a story, but
Speaker 3: I would tell the story that I wish my life
Speaker 3: had been with Larry. Well, you know, I'm a doctor.
Speaker 3: I'm taking a break because I'm sick, but my husband
Speaker 3: is in the military and he's away right now. You know,
Speaker 3: I would I made up a whole other life, but
Speaker 3: then I would go home to Isabella, you know, yelling
Speaker 3: at me, and it's like this isn't going to work.
Speaker 3: Like I need to stick to the truth because that's
Speaker 3: the only way out right.
Speaker 1: And you know, a lot of what you're describing is
Speaker 1: really consistent with what we know to be complex trauma, right.
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of this sounds very dissociated. You know,
Speaker 1: the sense of you almost getting into the accidents because
Speaker 1: you were so long and really what were the flashbacks
Speaker 1: and the rumination about call it rumination about the perpetrator
Speaker 1: and you know, over focus on that and trying to
Speaker 1: almost work all of that through and it pulls you
Speaker 1: out of your life. And then all of the anxiety
Speaker 1: and the fear and the loneliness, the isolation, all of
Speaker 1: this feels like complex trauma. And nobody's going to heal
Speaker 1: that on their own. There's no chance. And so what
Speaker 1: you were doing we call that the confabulation, the storytelling
Speaker 1: around what happened. There's a guy and in a military
Speaker 1: and that this and then that. You know, that's still
Speaker 1: almost like the ongoing echoes of the trauma, bondedness, the
Speaker 1: kinds of justifications you were having to make while you
Speaker 1: were in it, because the moment of facing truth would
Speaker 1: be such a tidal wave of grief, such a tidal
Speaker 1: wave of loss of recognition that it's so overwhelming that
Speaker 1: the trauma brain is going to keep it cordant off.
Speaker 1: And this is what complex trauma looks like. And it
Speaker 1: is different than what we call PTSD, different than the
Speaker 1: assault in the alley or the car accident or the
Speaker 1: wartime trauma. So the trial happens. Were you involved in
Speaker 1: the trial, Were you involved in providing testimony?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I testify in the trial. And it was so powerful,
Speaker 3: it was so liberating. Sure, it just felt like a
Speaker 3: huge weight off my shoulders, and it didn't even matter
Speaker 3: what happened. Afterwards, I felt like I got to tell
Speaker 3: the truth, and I got to tell other people what happened,
Speaker 3: and then they believed me. I lived for years, sure
Speaker 3: and actually seeing people not believe me. Yeah, when I
Speaker 3: would try to say something about him. But then when
Speaker 3: I finally got to tell the truth and people believing me,
Speaker 3: that was incredible.
Speaker 1: But you also said, you know, the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: Larry Rays he was always obsessed with this idea of truth.
Speaker 2: Truth.
Speaker 1: I'm all about the truth, you know, And I think
Speaker 1: that obsession was it was really what he was obsessed with,
Speaker 1: wasn't the truth. He was obsessed with being able to
Speaker 1: manufacture truth. That was the obsession for him. Other people
Speaker 1: would buy that. But in this space of the courtroom,
Speaker 1: your truth was heard, it was validated, and it was
Speaker 1: integrated into the proceedings. That in and of itself is
Speaker 1: a healing process to have your truth heard and seen.
Speaker 1: So at the end of this trial, he sentenced to
Speaker 1: sixty years and that's that he will die in prison.
Speaker 2: And what did that feel like for you?
Speaker 3: I sobbed tears of joy. Yeah, I was so relieved.
Speaker 3: I really felt like the judge got it. Yes, he
Speaker 3: completely understood the case. He understood all of the dynamics,
Speaker 3: you know, really what were the underlying factors that contributed
Speaker 3: to all of this. He really understood the scope. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was so impressed with Judge Lyman, and I felt
Speaker 3: represented and heard and validated through the process and especially
Speaker 3: with his sentence.
Speaker 2: So I agree with you, and I read his take
Speaker 2: on it.
Speaker 1: He got it, like, he really did get the nuance,
Speaker 1: the depth harm that this man had created, and the
Speaker 1: need for him to be kept out of the public
Speaker 1: in perpetuity because he would have perpetrated the minute he
Speaker 1: was back literally the minute, the day, the second that
Speaker 1: he would have been right back out there as this
Speaker 1: process unfolded.
Speaker 2: Were you able to reunite with your family.
Speaker 3: Yes, I reunited with my family before the trial started.
Speaker 3: We did our best to support each other while we
Speaker 3: were preparing for the trial, but we couldn't talk about
Speaker 3: I see the elephant in the room.
Speaker 2: Because you were told you couldn't.
Speaker 3: Yes, we were instructed not to. But you know, after
Speaker 3: the trial we were able to finally speak. And it's
Speaker 3: been really very very therapeutic, very healing to be able
Speaker 3: to talk openly about what had happened, what we were
Speaker 3: thinking at the time, how you were feeling, and really
Speaker 3: to be able to validate each other's feelings and fears.
Speaker 3: And it's like, oh, you were thinking that. I was
Speaker 3: thinking that too, but I couldn't say anything, And yeah,
Speaker 3: he's crazy. This was really horrible. It was awful that
Speaker 3: this happened to us. But we're all so glad that
Speaker 3: we were able to get out. I didn't get out.
Speaker 3: I was taken out by the government, but then I
Speaker 3: mean I did leave, Yeah, you know, willfully in the end.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I mean, there's still a lot of processing
Speaker 3: to be done because this happened for many years, and
Speaker 3: all of us were hurt in different ways, and he
Speaker 3: was very exacting about how he perpetrated the harm and
Speaker 3: very specific. So everyone has their own harm and we're
Speaker 3: doing our best to support each other as we heal.
Speaker 1: It's a process. It will always be a process as
Speaker 1: a nature of complex trauma. Many years did this unfold?
Speaker 3: It would have been twelve years.
Speaker 1: Wow, it's a very very long time, and thus it's
Speaker 1: a long process of healing. What was it like reuniting
Speaker 1: with your mom?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, it was so blissful is the first
Speaker 3: word that comes to mind. I just felt so safe
Speaker 3: and happy and love. I just felt a lot of love.
Speaker 3: And I was so afraid that she wouldn't talk to me,
Speaker 3: or that she was mad, and she was upset that
Speaker 3: she didn't want to talk to me, that she didn't
Speaker 3: want to deal with me, And then when she was,
Speaker 3: it's like one of the happiest moments in my life,
Speaker 3: like being able to see her.
Speaker 1: It must have been remarkable. How long had it been
Speaker 1: since you'd spoken with her?
Speaker 3: Seven years?
Speaker 1: Seven years? It's a long time. It's a long long time.
Speaker 1: And if you were to say what has been most
Speaker 1: useful or most impactful in your own process of healing
Speaker 1: in these last few years, what would you say those
Speaker 1: things were?
Speaker 3: I would say communicating, writing and speaking, restarting that conversation
Speaker 3: with myself which I didn't have while I was with Larry,
Speaker 3: and starting to get to know myself first, and then
Speaker 3: connecting with other people. And I know it's so scary
Speaker 3: to be vulnerable, it's so scary to share, but really
Speaker 3: that's where the healing is. We are who we are
Speaker 3: because of our connections, and we're people because of our connections.
Speaker 3: We wouldn't be able to live or survive without each other.
Speaker 3: And Larry was very intentional about isolating everyone and also
Speaker 3: being very withholding of love, so being willing to connect
Speaker 3: with others and to share and having a safe space
Speaker 3: to share, having people who are not judgmental and open
Speaker 3: and holding space. Those are critical. I'm a totally different person.
Speaker 3: It's striking to me to watch the documentary, like it
Speaker 3: feels like an out of body experience where I'm seeing
Speaker 3: someone and I'm seeing someone else be abused, Like it's
Speaker 3: not me that it's happening too, because I'm present now
Speaker 3: whereas before I wasn't, and I'm much further along. I
Speaker 3: think then people expect me to be given how soon
Speaker 3: this was, But I attribute that to all of the
Speaker 3: support around me. I have a friend that I was
Speaker 3: able to reconnect with and she actually told me she
Speaker 3: changed her parenting style because of what happened to me.
Speaker 3: She has a young child that she had a very
Speaker 3: different attitude about what she was going to teach her
Speaker 3: given what happened with Larry. For me, it's like, Okay, well,
Speaker 3: how do I make this not happen? How do I
Speaker 3: help my child not be in this situation. So I
Speaker 3: think that's really important for me now actually to get
Speaker 3: people to understand that, you know that it is about
Speaker 3: knowing yourself, and it is about being self aware and
Speaker 3: being self assured enough to be like, I know that
Speaker 3: this is me, even if he's saying that I'm not
Speaker 3: telling the truth. And you actually just reminded me of
Speaker 3: the other thing that helped me. It was accepting that
Speaker 3: I can make mistakes, yes, and that I can be wrong.
Speaker 3: Some of this for me, at least was not preventable, right,
Speaker 3: but at once I was in far enough. You know,
Speaker 3: he laid in so much shame, so much guilt, and
Speaker 3: then I was too embarrassed to reach out to anybody
Speaker 3: and tell them, hey, this is happening. And that's stopped
Speaker 3: me from getting help correct. And I know that especially
Speaker 3: people who are high achieving and have it together but
Speaker 3: do end up in situations in coercive relationships, they don't
Speaker 3: seek help because they're like, well, I know better. I
Speaker 3: made my bed, so I need to lie in it.
Speaker 3: No you don't.
Speaker 2: No, you can get up, you can get out of
Speaker 2: the bed.
Speaker 3: I can go get a new one.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's it. And shame is a prison.
Speaker 1: Shame is an absolute prison. I can't thank you enough
Speaker 1: for an absolutely incredible conversation. You just gave us the
Speaker 1: untold story of this whole Sarah Lawrence cult, because we've
Speaker 1: gotten more context from you today, and I'm so glad
Speaker 1: we gave it because Felicia, your story was so powerful.
Speaker 1: Any survivor who's been through a relationship that was coercively controlling,
Speaker 1: a really malevolent, malignant and predatory will say, now I
Speaker 1: see even those things like what were the things that
Speaker 1: made him attractive, we're actually things that we'd expect anyone
Speaker 1: to find attractive if they were in your circumstance. We're
Speaker 1: really about breaking down shame and'sma here and I think
Speaker 1: the way you shared your story, we're just hearing so
Speaker 1: much of this for the very first time. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much for being so open. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for sharing. And it's not easy to talk about,
Speaker 1: so I'm incredibly grateful to you for being willing to
Speaker 1: share that.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you for having me.
Speaker 1: That was our absolute pleasure and honor. Here are my
Speaker 1: takeaways from my conversation with Felicia. First, there was a
Speaker 1: relentless quality to Larry Ray's abuse wearing down his targets
Speaker 1: until they were making things up to appease him, and
Speaker 1: he would then use those coerced disclosures to call Felicia
Speaker 1: and others liars. In abusive relationships, people will often give
Speaker 1: in just to end the ongoing abuse. There is one
Speaker 1: truth in these relationships. You simply cannot win. Either you
Speaker 1: hold your ground and keep getting broken down, or you
Speaker 1: give in and are accused of lying or worse, it
Speaker 1: is an eternal catch twenty two. There is only one
Speaker 1: agenda in these relationships, and that is to maintain a
Speaker 1: delusional version of reality and for the perpetrator to suck
Speaker 1: everyone else into it. In our next takeaway, listening to Felicia,
Speaker 1: we are reminded that there are a lot of folks
Speaker 1: out there who were psychopath goggles. Felicia shared that more
Speaker 1: than once, Larry was able to ingratiate himself into what
Speaker 1: should be confidential spaces like psychiatric hospitals and fall into
Speaker 1: what she was describing as almost collegial banter with the
Speaker 1: other physicians, despite having absolutely no medical background whatsoever. These
Speaker 1: psychopath goggles also mean that people may miss some important
Speaker 1: assessment opportunities, such as exploring whether there were relationship abuse
Speaker 1: issues raised by the situation. Maybe it's my personal bias,
Speaker 1: but when someone rolls in and is very authoritative and
Speaker 1: overly confident, I become suspicious. For this next takeaway, a
Speaker 1: major theme that resonated throughout Felicia's story was this idea
Speaker 1: that a perpetrator in a coercively controlling relationship will break
Speaker 1: someone down to rescue them. This dynamic repeated throughout their relationship.
Speaker 1: He would break her down, and then he would soothe her.
Speaker 1: He told her that people were going to harm her,
Speaker 1: and then he told her that the solution was to
Speaker 1: leave her life in Los Angeles and move to New York.
Speaker 2: Where he could protect her.
Speaker 1: The abuse rescue cycle is a horrific dynamic that can
Speaker 1: result in the psychological imprisonment of a person in this
Speaker 1: type of situation. In this next takeaway way, numerous themes
Speaker 1: of coercive control arose throughout Felicia's experience. Isolation, menace, financial dependency,
Speaker 1: threats to her family, threatened and destroyed livelihood, and sexual manipulation.
Speaker 1: Her independence was slowly eroded, and her professional identity and
Speaker 1: training were blocked. In a coercively controlled relationship, free will
Speaker 1: is stolen. This links to the concept of bounded choice
Speaker 1: that doctor Yanya shared on a previous episode. At one point,
Speaker 1: Felicia shares that her choices were to either do manual
Speaker 1: labor or give in to coercive sexual demands. Other choices,
Speaker 1: such as going back to her career, are effectively stolen
Speaker 1: under conditions of coercive control. And lastly, Felicia's path of
Speaker 1: healing after Larry Ray's arrest shows us the slow process
Speaker 1: of healing from psychopathic and coercively controlled relationships. She went
Speaker 1: through a process of still feeling supportive of Larry after
Speaker 1: his arrest. However, when she finally was pulled away from
Speaker 1: the system and from Isabella and had her own attorney,
Speaker 1: she saw that as a turning point, although it took
Speaker 1: a long time, during which she still struggled with rumination
Speaker 1: and playing out conversations in her mind. Significant steps in
Speaker 1: this process included radical acceptance of the situation and recognizing
Speaker 1: her rock bottom, talking about what happened with her therapist, attorneys,
Speaker 1: and the director of the Stolen Youth documentary, being seen
Speaker 1: and heard, and having the support of people close to her.
Speaker 1: She acknowledged that she was stuck for a while and
Speaker 1: that healing remains an ongoing process for her