Imprisoned for 30 years by my father, the cult leader
Katy was brainwashed into believing her dad was God and lightning would strike her dead if she tried to flee the cult’s HQ in London. Here, she tells a story that’s as bizarre as it’s utterly astounding . . .
How devastating it is to hear Katy Morgan-Davies detail the memories of her childhood. A child will naturally crave comfort and cuddles — but what sort of warped world must a little girl inhabit when she seeks that solace from a bathroom tap?
‘I used to tell the tap, “You are on my side,” ’ says Katy, with the half-smile of someone who now knows exactly how crazy her words sound.
‘I’d kiss the tap. I’d hug the toilet when the flush worked.’ Such is the disturbed legacy of the ‘social experiment’ Katy was born to fulfil.
For Katy was raised — although imprisoned might be a better description — in a Maoist cult, and lived for an astonishing 30 years as a ‘caged bird’ in a commune run by a violent rapist who declared himself God.
when she finally escaped in 2013, Katy had the social skills of a six year-old. She was unable to cross the road or use basic appliances.
She had never seen a doctor, or visited a dentist. She had been brainwashed to believe her own behaviour was to blame for natural disasters such as earthquakes.
It was even her fault, she had been led to think, that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded on its launch in 1986. worse, she discovered only after her release that her father — the man responsible for the brainwashing — was actually the cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan, a man now behind bars for his crimes.
Balakrishnan, who was jailed for 23 years earlier this year for rape and false imprisonment, ruled the (mainly female) collective with violence and psychological terror, including threatening members with what he told them was an electronic satellite warfare machine he called Jackie.
Although he would administer beatings and force his devotees to carry out sexual acts, he also convinced them that lightning would strike them dead if they stepped outside the house without his permission. The reason for Katy’s existence? Balakrishnan wanted someone to help him run the world.
Now the full story of the cult is being told — for the first time — in a chilling documentary by the award-winning producer Vanessa Engle.
It’s a devastating piece of television which at times seems more like a sci-fi drama than a documentary, so outlandish are the events depicted.
That this astonishing saga unfolded in the middle of London, in a seemingly ordinary home, only adds to the sense of utter disbelief.
one man, who lived in a house in Brixton, overlooking the flat where Katy was kept captive, breaks down in tears as he describes catching glimpses of Katy at the window.
Yes, he knew the ‘family’ were odd, but no, he did not even consider that the child might have been in danger.
The most chilling aspect is hearing Katy herself, now 33, describe how she came to be. Her birth was described as ‘Project Prem’, and when she was only a child she learned that her destiny was to help Balakrishnan (or Comrade Bala, as she called him) rule the world, according to his communist doctrine.
At birth, she was christened Prem Maopinduzi, which means, she explains ‘Love Revolution’ — more of an order than a baby’s name. ‘I hated that,’ she admits. She changed her name to Katy as soon as she was able.
Her surname comes from her mother, a once brilliant student called Sian Davies who fell into the clutches of the cult in her early 20s, and never escaped. once a student at Cheltenham Ladies’ College, Sian (described in the programme as a ‘brilliant thinker’) became one of Balakrishnan’s most loyal devotees — and ended up pregnant by him.
Yet she died in 1996, after falling from a window. Katy, who was just 14 at the time, believes she was trying to escape.
In the programme, Katy describes how she witnessed her mother being beaten by Bala, and held down by other cult members, the day before the fatal fall.
‘Sian was lying on the floor, tied up,’ she says. ‘She was gagged. There was a piece of cloth in her mouth. [other cult members] om, Josie, Bala and Chanda were holding her down. She had tried to run out. She was crying to escape.’
Incredibly, Katy did not know at this time that Sian was her mother. According to the thinking of Balakrishnan’s cult, there were no ‘mothers’ or ‘fathers’. Children were raised by The Collective, and emotional bonds — to anyone — were discouraged.
‘He was the only one who was allowed to cuddle me,’ Katy says. If any of the women attempted such a thing they would be ‘lesbians’, Balakrishnan decreed. It was a brutal upbringing.
Another woman who escaped the cult at the same time as Katy, Aishah wahab, now 72, is also interviewed in the programme. She describes being punished when she tried to comfort Katy when she had wet herself.
when Sian died, says Katy, she felt only relief because, as one of Bala’s most devoted followers, her mother had also been one of the more brutal members of The Collective.
‘Life got better for me, in a funny way,’ she says, of the period immediately after Sian’s death.
‘Because she was one of the worst servants of Bala. It was such a relief. His worst enforcer was gone.’
How did Balakrishnan manage to create this cult, and keep its vile activities secret for so long?
Balakrishnan had been known as a Maoist activist in London as far back as the mid-Seventies. Heading the so-called workers’ Institute of Marxism–Leninism– Mao Zedong Thought, he was a regular at far-Left rallies, and even then had a smattering of loyal followers, perhaps 15 at most, among them his wife, Chanda.
Aishah, originally from Malaysia, tells how Bala offered her a home and a life that she didn’t imagine could be bettered. ‘I was really inspired by him. I thought he was great.’
The group did come to the attention of the authorities, it seems. In the late Seventies they were investigated by the police, and the house they were living in South London was raided — but the suspicion at this time was that they were using illegal drugs, which was not the case.
‘None of us even smoked cigarettes,’ remembers Aishah. If
‘She was on the floor, tied up and gagged’
they were ‘high’ on anything, it was Bala’s teachings.
His mission was to create a new society, one which would challenge the ‘Fascist State’ of Britain.
Quite why the women who joined his organisation as adults were so easily convinced by Bala is unclear, but somehow he convinced them that he was a god, who had to be obeyed.
He controlled how his followers lived, what they ate, what they wore. He tried to control what they thought — and largely succeeded.
His most effective weapon? Jackie, the mind-machine, which he somehow convinced them was omnipotent.
At his trial, it emerged that Balakrishnan had raped at least two of his followers.
In 1983, when Sian became pregnant (it is not known whether she was coerced into a sexual relationship), it heralded the most macabre chapter of the story.
Aishah insists that the other cult members were not told when Sian got pregnant. Indeed, when Aishah noticed her swelling belly, and asked outright if she was having a baby, it was denied, and put down to ‘gas’.
When baby Katy arrived into the commune, no mention was made of her parentage, and it was made clear to the women that this child could not be treated in the traditional way. Katy was to be dressed in gender-neutral clothes and raised without toys, without any contact with other children and without the usual human affection that babies crave. To hear Katy talk about this — her tense fluctuating between present and past — is heartbreaking. Asked if she had ever visited the doctor or dentist, she says: ‘No, not a lot’. Why?
‘I guess he didn’t want anybody to know of my existence. He used to say NHS means Never Help Self. So if we get ill we have to focus on him, and then we will get better, as if by magic.’
When the women were allowed to watch the television it seems to have been for the purposes of controlling them. His iron-grip on them was reinforced by this ludicrous notion that their obedience to him was somehow influencing world events.
Katy talks of being shown footage of the Space Shuttle Challenger blow up in the sky.
‘He said the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up because people were challenging him in the house,’ she says. ‘The shape in the sky was like a “Y” when it blew up and he said it was because people were vying with him.’ She was told that if she did not behave in a way that was pleasing to Bala, everyday objects would rebel. She talks of being amazed when the light switches worked, or when the toilet flushed — because Bala had told her that they would not.
This is why she would embrace them, she says. Balakrishnan even found sinister explanations for the most banal of events.
One day a pizza delivery boy came to their door, by mistake. That day there was a huge earthquake in Japan. Balakrishnan told his followers the events were linked.
‘Bala said this was the fascist state trying to provoke him. The same day there was an earthquake in Kobe in Japan. He said Kobe means God’s Door. When there was a knock on God’s door, then there was this huge earthquake.
‘It was to punish the Fascist State for the fact that the pizza delivery boy had come to God’s, Bala’s, door.’
Shamefully for the authorities, it seems Katy did make an attempt to escape Bala’s clutches. In 2005, when she was 22, she says she fled the house via the open back door, and told a passer-by that she had run away.
She was directed to the local police station, where she spoke to officers. ‘They persuaded me to let them call Bala,’ she says.’ He turned up, and reassured the police ‘all was well’.
It would be another eight years before she would escape her prison for good. The final flight came in 2013 when one of the other devotees, Josie Herival, became increasingly concerned about Katy, who was unwell.
Bala refused to let any of the women seek help. Eventually, and using a mobile phone she had smuggled in, Josie called a helpline she had seen advertised on TV.
It was charity workers Gerard Stocks and Yvonne Hall, who run an organisation helping victims of human trafficking, who helped rescue the three women. They eventually took them into their own home.
They talk in the programme of that surreal drive away from the house, and even now are amazed at the questions they were asked.
‘They wanted to know why the lights coming towards us were white, while the ones going away from us were red,’ says Gerard, still incredulous that the women did not seem to have ever been in a car after dark. The pair talk of the long process to help the women adjust to life after captivity.
‘Even now, I would suggest that two of the three are very scared of Jackie, that Jackie is going to take revenge at some point,’ says Gerard.
In fact, while Katy and Aishah have attempted to rebuild their lives, Josie is still blindly devoted to Bala.
She declined to be interviewed for this documentary but has, since her escape, continued to defend Comrade Bala and his teachings. It’s something Katy finds distressing.
‘I’m sad for Josie, but that is her choice. I’m sad that she can’t free her mind from the spell of the cult,’ she says.
What of Katy? Can she ever lead normal life? She seems determined to. She is at college now, and, after a time in sheltered accommodation, has moved into her own flat. Amazingly, she seems devoid of bitterness.
In this programme she is asked directly if she hates the man who stole 30 years of her life.
‘No. I did used to hate him. I just felt completely powerless. But life is also very short. There is no time to be spent on hatred and anger.’
She quotes Nelson Mandela, saying that it is futile ‘to hold on to your anger, hatred and bitterness’.
Incredibly, she even says she would like to one day be reunited with her father — and her tormentor.
‘I would like to reconcile with him in the future’ she says, and adds, ‘if he wants it’. The Cult Next Door is on BBC2 on January 26 at 9pm.
‘He didn’t want anybody to know of my existence’ ‘He blamed us for the Shuttle blowing up’