We had to treat him like God, says daughter
REAL life was unbearable for the daughter of the lunatic known as Comrade Bala. Her only refuge was the world of books. She became obsessed with The Lord of the Rings trilogy – quoting large passages in court – and Harry Potter.
Now 32, she gave a heart-rending insight into life within her father’s ‘collective’. For her first 30 years she was kept prisoner. She did not attend nursery or school, go to the dentist or doctor, or have any friends. She walked with a strange gait – the result of being confined to the house. She did not realise the woman she saw as her main carer was, in fact, her mother.
Sian Davies, a once-beautiful woman from Llanelli, South Wales, had been lured into Bala’s cult while a postgraduate student at the LSE. Her death in mysterious circumstances in 1997 had left the young girl with only Bala – whom she did not realise was her father – his wife Chandra and a small group of similarly captive women for company.
‘I just remember being very bored and scared,’ says the daughter, who was granted anonymity by the judge and wishes to be known as Fran.
‘I used to look out of the window and see other children playing and I was not allowed. Always... a fear of being bullied, a fear of violence and a fear of being powerless and degraded.’
She was never hugged and was attacked for any minor transgression, including singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
‘I was bullied, tormented, humiliated, isolated and degraded. I lived in constant fear and was deprived of a normal life.’ She was desperate to escape but too scared. ‘I felt like a caged bird with clipped wings. Like a fly in a spider’s web. Just really helpless and powerless. There was the fear that there was nothing for me outside – I had no friends, I had no money, nowhere to stay... nothing.
‘It was like invisible handcuffs. I’d be struck down by lightning or spontaneously combust if I went out on my own.
‘I remember when I was aged six I was even told not to look out of windows. Sometimes I did, and I used to see other children playing.
‘The neighbour had a party for their little boy, there were balloons and slides in the garden. I was told not to look at that, but I did look. And I used to feel I was missing out.
‘I remember lying on the floor near the front door and Bala put his foot on my face and kicking my head. And then he put me outside and locked the door.
‘That was just so scary because I was told I’d died if I went outside, and horrible monsters would come and take me away.
‘My mother used to say he was god, he was the star of our lives, so we had to worship him. He was going to rule the world where he was in charge, and everyone was basically his slave.’
The vulnerable women believed in Bala’s ‘mind control machine’ Jackie – an acronym for Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna and Immortal Easwaran [a Hindu word for god]. Fran said: ‘It was a mind control machine which can read everybody’s thoughts and control everything in the world – the whole universe, the whole of nature, they are all controlled by Jackie, and Bala was his master.’
THE collective comprised Comrade Bala, his wife, Chandra, and six or seven other women including Fran’s mother, Sian. She had attended Cheltenham Ladies’ College, where she excelled at sports, and Aberystwyth University before doing a postgraduate course at the London School of Economics.
Her father, a GP, had committed suicide when she was 17, probably leaving her vulnerable to the charismatic Bala. Another in the house was Josephine Herivel. The youngest of three daughters of John Herivel, a mathematician who helped to crack the Nazi Enigma code at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, she was a music prodigy and moved from Belfast to London to study at the Royal College of Music but dropped out after becoming involved in Left-wing activisim, which led to her attending one of Bala’s meetings.
At the outset in the Seventies, this strange little man – whose mission was to turn Britain into a communist state – and his band of attractive young women attracted attention. But as the cult faded from public view as it turned into something much darker.
At some point, Bala decided he didn’t want men in the collective. In his mind, the cult was no longer about Chairman Mao and the rights of the proletariat, but about Bala and the fulfilment of his sexual perversions. His opportunity came in 1979 when Chandra spent several weeks in hospital in a diabetic coma. Bala, who terri-
fied the women by telling them he knew how to kill them by pushing a pressure point on the neck, began having sex with Sian. Two others were repeatedly raped.
In late 1982, Sian’s stomach began to swell but it was only when her waters broke that Bala allowed an ambulance to be called. She was taken to hospital and gave birth to Fran. Chandra was furious and refused to acknowledge Sian or the baby when they returned home, while Bala, in a typically deranged fashion, insisted the baby had been born as a result of ‘electronic warfare’.
The routine at the collective became increasingly bizarre, with the women being ordered to stand around Bala in a semi-circle while he delivered three to four-hour lectures. While the two rape victims, now in their sixties, fled Sian and Josie stayed on – and Bala became increasingly paranoid as the group moved around a succession of grimy properties in the Lambeth area of South London. Over time, Sian became increasingly troubled. She had started talking to herself.
On December 23, 1996, Fran saw her lying on the sitting-room floor, her feet and hands tied up with cloth, her mouth gagged.
The next day, Christmas Eve, Fran came across Bala and the other women standing around Sian, who was lying in blood on the concrete area below the bathroom window. She was saying to Bala, ‘Kill me’.
Sian, who had broken her neck and was crippled, was taken to hospital. Bala visited her there, flanked by two of the other women who kept their heads bowed at all times.
During this time, her family called the house to speak to Sian, and were told she had gone travelling in India. She died from her injuries on August 3, 1997. The coroner described her death as a ‘mystery’ and recorded an open verdict. Fran did not discover that Sian was her mother until after her death and her existence continued to be kept secret from Sian’s mother, Ceri, who died in 2003 not knowing she had a granddaughter.
As the years went on, Fran’s health began to fail. Even though she was desperately ill with diabetes, Bala wouldn’t let her see a doctor.
It was Josie Herivel who made the call to the Freedom Charity in October 2013 asking for the help that led to their escape.
Asked what would have happened if she hadn’t escaped, Fran said: ‘I would be dead. And if I hadn’t [died] from diabetes I would have committed suicide because I just couldn’t bear feeling like that. I
didn’t want to live like an animal any more.’ Since being rescued from the collective, she has learned the awful truth that Bala is her – DNA tests confirmed it.
In court, giving evidence via video link, Fran cut an eloquent, if otherworldly, figure, now learning to live in the outside world.
Fran was placed with in the care of Yvonne Hall and her husband Gerard Stocks, who provide supported housing to vulnerable adults. She told the Mail yesterday that although very intelligent, Fran had no practical skills whatsoever to deal with the outside world. ‘We have had to look at her needs from day one,’ she said. ‘From teaching her to cross the road, how to shop, how to use the buses and just navigate from A to B.’ Fran said: ‘Now I can go out when I want to, can make friends with whoever I choose. And do small things like dye my hair or have my ears pierced. It is such a pleasure.’ But she added: ‘I missed out on family. I never even knew who my mother was until after she died. My uncle, my grandparents and other family members never even knew I existed.’ Of Balak– rishnan, however, she said: I feel sorry for him because I don’t know what way that is to live – to be so full of anger and hatred all the time and wanting to hurt other people. ‘I forgive him, really. And I would like to reconcile with him in the future. If I leave the place with anger and hatred and bitterness then I’m still in prison. And I don’t want to be in prison that way.’
Sian’s family are less forgiving. Yesterday her cousin, Emyr Morgan, a marketing consultant, told the Mail that Sian’s mother Ceri even hired a private detective to try to find her daughter and took to walking the streets of South London in the hope she would find her. When she learned of Sian’s death, she hadn’t seen her for 20 years. She died a ‘very sad’ woman, he said.
In response to verdicts against Balakrishnan at Southwark Crown Court, Mr Morgan said: ‘ I’m delighted he’s been found guilty, I hope he rots in jail.’
YET in a curious twist to the tale it seems Josie Herivel, now 57, regrets her actions that led to the cult being raided and saw Balakrishnan facing the rest of his life in jail.
In October, speaking from a secret address in the north of England, she gave an interview to the Belfast Telegraph to defend him.
‘I didn’t need rescuing,’ she told the newspaper. ‘I could have left at any time, but I didn’t want to. The state has split our family up. People need to know the truth.’
She referred to Balakrishnan as the ‘ teacher’ and said the only thing that had kept her going since leaving the collective in 2013 was the thought of being reunited with him.
Psychologists believe she is suffering from Stockholm syndrome – a condition in which hostages express empathy and sympathy toward their captors. She says she isn’t.
Yesterday, she finally got her wish of meeting her ‘teacher’ again when she travelled to Southwark Crown Court in London.
Dressed in an old-fashioned anorak and shoes, with her brown hair tied back in a pony tail, she sat with Bala and Chandra in the court canteen as they waited for the verdict to come in.
When the jury delivered their guilty verdicts, Miss Herivel stood up in the gallery and shouted: ‘You’re sentencing an innocent man to jail, shame on you!’
She and Chandra are surely alone in that view. AdditionAl reporting: dominik lemanski