Sick Communist Cult Leader Mistreated Daughter, Committed Sex Crimes For Years (Pictured)
The evil leader of a communist cult who used violence, fear and sexual degradation to control women he held captive for years has been found guilty of a string of deviant sex assaults.
Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, raped two followers and falsely imprisoned and mistreated his daughter for more than 30 years in a commune in South London.
Southwark Crown Court heard he carried out a “brutal” campaign of violence.
He was convicted of six counts of indecent assault, four counts of rape and two counts of actual bodily harm.
Balakrishnan, of Enfield, north London – who was also found guilty of cruelty to a child under 16.
He brainwashed his followers into thinking he had supernatural powers, the jury heard.
Following the verdict, Judge Deborah Taylor told Balakrishnan he faced a “substantial custodial sentence”.
Balakrishnan’s daughter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she was “overwhelmed with relief”.
She added: “I believe justice has definitely been done.”
“I am very happy with the result and, at the end of the day, he is still my dad.”
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Det Sgt Paul Wiggett said the cult leader’s daughter was scared of her father and that she “genuinely believed the day she left the house she was going to explode – that her life would come to an end”.
The woman was born to Balakrishnan follower Sian Davies, who was known as Comrade Sian, but the then 13-year-old was unaware she was her mother.
Sian Davies suffered fatal injuries when she fell from a window at the cult’s home on Christmas Eve in 1996.
Balakrishnan’s daughter told the court she was beaten and banned from singing nursery rhymes, going to school or making friends.
The cult leader’s daughter felt like a “caged bird.”
Forces to live like an animal
Describing herself as a “caged bird”, the woman escaped in 2013 at the age of 30 with the help of a charity.
Speaking about her escape she told the court: “If I hadn’t [died] from diabetes I would have committed suicide, because I just couldn’t bear feeling like that any more.”
“I just had enough. I didn’t want to live like an animal any more.”
Speaking about life inside the commune, the imprisoned woman said: “I felt like a caged bird with clipped wings. Like a fly in a spider’s web.”
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The court heard she found courage to fight back from the stories of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings – the only books she was allowed to read because Balakrishnan identified with the characters.
In 2005, then in her 20s, she made an escape and went to a police station, but the court heard she was encouraged to return home.
Balakrishnan came to the UK from Singapore in 1963 and enrolled at the London School of Economics.
By the 1970s he was heading a Maoist group known as the Workers Institute, based in Acre Lane, Brixton, and had gained several followers.
The evil cult leader Aravindan Balakrishna.
He forced works of Chairman Mao and himself on his victims
But over the years this group dwindled to six women and was transformed into a “cult of Bala,” where his followers were only allowed to read left-wing texts and were sexually assaulted and beaten.
Giving evidence, Balakrishnan denied sex assault allegations and insisted two victims in the commune had “pushed” him to have sex and competed for his attentions, even with the mother of his daughter.
He said his views were grounded in the teachings of the Chinese revolutionary leader Chairman Mao which “meant almost everything to him.”
Balakrishna and members of the cult.
Brainwashed victims
After the verdict one of the defendant’s former followers, Josephine Herivel, who was present in court, shouted: “You are sending an innocent man to prison. Shame on you.”
Praising the victims, chief crown prosecutor for London Baljit Ubhey said: “Balakrishnan has robbed these women including his own daughter of a huge part of their lives.”
Balakrishnan, who was originally arrested in November 2013, was cleared of one count of actual bodily harm and one count of indecent assault.
He is due to be sentenced on 29 January.
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