Cult leader who raped women for 30 years dies in jail at age 81
09.04.2022 - 13:11
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A cult leader who imprisoned and raped women for 30 years has died in prison aged 81. Aravindan Balakrishnan, who ran a Maoist clan, preyed upon his female followers and persuaded them he had god-like powers.
The Enfield local referred to himself as Comrade Bala and was jailed in 2016 for 23 years after his cult, which he had been running since the 1970s, was exposed. Balakrishnan was convicted of a number of offences, including child cruelty, false imprisonment and assault.
He died in HMP Dartmoor yesterday, the BBC reported. A Prison Service spokesperson said the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman had been informed of Balakrishnan's death, reports Sky News.
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During his trial at Southwark Crown Court, jurors heard that he raped two of his followers. He also terrified his prisoners with a made-up robot he called Jackie which he claimed could read their minds.
He fathered a daughter with one of his victims, who is now 39 years old. Katy Morgan-Davies said her ordeal had been "horrible, so dehumanising and degrading” after she waived her right to anonymity. She added: "I felt like a caged bird with clipped wings."
Ms Morgan-Davies branded her father a “narcissist and a psychopath” and added: "The people he looked up to were people like Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein - you couldn't criticise them either in the house. They were his gods and his heroes. These were the sort of people he wanted to emulate."
During her torment, she had been beaten and banned from singing nursery rhymes, going to school, or making friends. She accused her father of using the cult as a “pilot unit” for his grand ambitions of taking over the