A lot of times when I watch documentaries about mind control or cult or anything like that I think to myself “that could never be me.” A lot of times it's because everybody looks filthy and I like taking showers or they have to get weird haircuts and outfits and things like that. In this documentary Stolen Youth this could not have been me because even though I have not gone to college I could not imagine me and seven other roommates suddenly having a new roommate in the form of somebody's ex-con daddy. This is about this group of students at Sarah Lawrence College and one of the girls is like “Hey, my dad's getting out of prison you mind if he chills on the couch here?” And they all agreed that its cool! Thankfully, like with every documentary about a cult or anything like this I always look for Black people and there are none in this one.
So this guy named Larry Ray ends up moving in with these kids. He starts off by giving them advice and one by one they all start just falling in love with this guy and taking all the advice and things that he gives. Next thing you know their asses have moved to New York where Larry has taken over someone else's apartment. It starts off with these kids and other people start getting roped in. One of the guys has his younger sister come in and now she's a part of it and then his older sister who's on her way to being a damn doctor is brainwashed and a part of this. She is also one of Larry's two women that he sleeps in bed with. This guy goes from giving advice to brainwashing them getting them to get money from themselves and their families and controlling their lives. The amount of stuff that this man gets away with is insane to me because it's not like this happened in the 1950s or 60s. This is within the last 10 years. He ends up getting evicted out of New York and now they're in New Jersey and he has them digging up fields, screaming at them, putting locks on the fridge, and all kind of crazy shit that I would not have been able to deal with for a day let alone years. One by one they all slowly start leaving but there are a few of them that stay behind and it does not get any better for them.
By the time we get to the third episode the older sister that was invited is completely out of it. They're not really saved until the police start getting involved and they are tried along with Larry for his crimes. One of the girls is so damn brainwashed that they wanted to declare her mentally incompetent so she can't really stand trial and she's like “What are you talking about?! I'm totally competent I want to stand trial!” and now she's in jail for the next four years. Larry ends up getting 60 years. The reason why is one of the the causes is sex trafficking because one of the girls became an escort to pay him back money. What is she paying him back money for? Nothing. This guy would have them think that they broke or did something and he needs to be paid back for it even though he was just making things up. These kids would even start questioning their own reality and one of them that was going to be a doctor even believed that her poor family was trying to have assassins come after Larry and that they had been poisoned.
Thankfully this does end on somewhat of a good note because the siblings are all back together again and slowly erasing all that crazy nonsense that Larry put into their heads. Like I've said I could not be a part of a cult and I really don't understand all of the mechanics that are mentally involved to look at any of this stuff as it's happening and go along with it. I know he used a lot of manipulation and sleep deprivation and at one point was pulling on one of the guys tongues with some pliers and tying up his genitals. That would have been my cue to leave. Not even as the one being tortured but somebody watching this go on. This was on Hulu and they use just three episodes which is the perfect amount. If you coming at me with a documentary that's longer than four episodes you better make every single episode worth watching because I can't be watching 8 9 10 episodes of nonsense like this.
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