A communist revolutionary who led a commune in Brixton in the 1970s imprisoned his daughter, and beat and raped two female acolytes in collectives across south London without being detected over a period of three decades, a court has heard.
The alleged victims of Aravindan Balakrishnan, a communist who set up the Workers Institute of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought in Brixton in the 1970s, included his daughter who was born in the commune and only escaped aged 30, the jury at Southwark crown court was told by the prosecution.
He is facing trial for false imprisonment and child cruelty against his daughter as well as the rapes, sexual assaults and assaults of two other female commune members, none of whom can be named.
Aravindan Balakrishnan. Photo courtesy www.thetimes.co.uk
Balakrishan, now 75, sat impassive in the dock as he heard that he faces in total four charges of rape, six charges of indecent assault, three charges of actual bodily harm, cruelty to a person under 16 and false imprisonment.
He was arrested in November 2013 when his daughter finally left the commune with the help of the Freedom Charity, alongside two other longstanding commune members, Aishah Wahab and Josie Herivel.
After a period in which he was “a charismatic man and a vivid and energetic speaker”, drawing around 100 followers with his plan to overthrow the fascist state as he saw Britain in the 1970s, his influence waned and the collective was reduced to him and just six women, the court heard.
He then mounted a campaign of “debilitating mental and physical violence”, beating, raping and sexually assaulting some of the women, all the while with his wife, Chandra, living with them too. His wife and the others “had all been so dominated and brainwashed to the extent that they believed that he was all powerful and all-seeing”, the court heard.
Rosina Cottage QC, prosecuting, told the jury: “This case concerns the
brutal and calculated manipulation by one man to subjugate women under
his control.”
Cottage said his daughter was born to another collective member, Sian Davies.
“[The daughter] had no independent life,” the prosecutor told the jury. “She was bullied, beaten and separated from the world. She never went to school, played with a friend, saw a doctor or a dentist. She barely left the house. She was hidden from the outside world, and it kept from her, except as a tool with which to terrify her into subjugation.”
The court heard that Balakrishnan’s alleged rape and sexual assault victims “were cowed into submission” and “stayed in the collective too frightened to leave and hating to stay”.
Cottage said: “They were forced into sexual acts over which they had no choice and were deliberately degrading and humiliating. He seemed to exult in his power over them.”
“In order to bend them to his will he used mental and physical dominance and violence, sexual degradation, and in relation to one, his daughter, 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,” she said.
The trial continues. Article courtesy http://www.theguardian.com
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