UK Maoist cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan jailed for 23 years for raping followers

January 29, 2016 23:49

A Maoist cult leader, convicted of raping and beating his brainwashed British female followers and keeping his own daughter a fearful prisoner for more than three decades, was jailed for 23 years on Friday.

Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, known as Comrade Bala, used sexual degradation and physical and mental violence to keep the women under his control. Prosecutors said he turned his south London Communist commune into his own personal cult with members who believed him to be a god.

His own daughter, Katy Morgan-Davies, who was born to one of the women in the collective, was also bullied and beaten, barely allowed to leave her home and never permitted to go to school, play with friends or even see a doctor.

"He loved violence, and those totalitarian dictatorships. He wanted to be like that, he wanted to be like Stalin, or Mao or Pol Pot," she told Sky News.

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