Cult followers brainwashed, raped, court told

LONDON: A charismatic Maoist cult leader brainwashed and raped followers in his commune, and kept his own daughter imprisoned for 30 years, a London court heard Thursday.

Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, knownasComradeBala,terrorised women in the commune over decades, Southwark Crown Court was told as his trial began.

“This case concerns the brutal and calculated manipulation by one man to subjugate women under his control,” prosecutor Rosina Cottage said.

“In order to bend them to his will, he used mental and physical dominance and violence, sexual degradation.

“In relation to one

... he controlled every sphere of her life to the extent that she was unable either emotionally or physically to leave his influence until she was 30 years old and ill with diabetes.”

Balakrishnan was at the heart of a south London communist group in the 1970s, jurors heard.

The commune became the ‘cult of Bala’ as his influence waned and his group dwindled to six women.

“One was his wife Chandra, but she and the others had all been so dominated and brainwashed to the extent that they believed that he was all powerful and all-seeing,” Cottage said.

“Each woman lived a life of violence, fear, isolation and confinement.”

Balakrishnan denies seven counts of indecent assault and four counts of rape against two women during the 1970s and 1980s.

He also denies three counts of actual bodily harm, cruelty to a child under the age of 16 and false imprisonment.

His alleged victims cannot be named for legal reasons.

His daughter was beaten, bullied, banned from going to school or playing with friends. She barely left the house, jurors heard.

Brought up as ‘collective property’, she was terrified into subjugation, Cottage said.

She had to “worship the defendant as God,” the prosecutor said.

Balakrishnan

convinced followers he controlled the Sun, Moon, wind and fires.

They thought he had a mind control machine monitoring their thoughts.

One woman was so paranoid she thought the Americans were controlling her because she bought a pair of Levi’s trousers, “a marque so identified with American imperialism”, jurors heard.

The two women he sexually abused were “cowed into submission” and forced into “deliberately degrading and humiliating” sex acts, said Cottage.

After raping one woman, he told her he was “purifying her”, the prosecutor said. — AFP