Comrade Bala: Daughter of jailed cult leader waives right of anonymity to reclaim suppressed identity
Katy Morgan-Davies went public with her new name as her father was jailed for 23 years
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Your support makes all the difference.The daughter of a brutal Maoist demagogue who ruled over a female-only commune with sexual violence and manipulation has waived her right to anonymity in an attempt to reclaim an identity that had been suppressed during 30 years of enslavement.
Katy Morgan-Davies went public with her new name as her father was jailed for 23 years for false imprisonment and raping two followers who were initially attracted to his brand of charismatic revolutionary teaching and then became too terrified to leave.
Ms Morgan-Davies was kept as a “project” by her father, Aravindan Balakrishnan, never allowed to leave a series of houses that were home for his dwindling band of followers, and beaten when she doubted his powers.
Her mother Sian Davies was a member of the commune who had an affair with the married “Comrade Bala”. She fell to her death from a window at the commune in 1996.
Ms Morgan-Davies, 33, said that she had taken her new name to connect with her mother’s family and in tribute to the American singer Katy Perry and her song “Roar”. “I love that song. It is about not being put down, coming back, standing up for yourself,” she said. “I’ve been a non-person all my life and now is my chance to be myself.”
Her father, who once told his followers that he would rule the world, was led from the dock without comment yesterday after being jailed.
“This is political persecution,” one of his remaining followers, Josephine Herivel, a former commune member, shouted after the sentencing as she sat with Comrade Bala’s wife in the public gallery. “AB has been framed.”
A psychiatric report found that Balakrishnan was suffering from a narcissistic personality disorder and was preoccupied with fantasies of power, Southwark Crown Court heard.
Ms Morgan-Davies said that the people he looked up to were Stalin, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. “You couldn’t criticise them either in the house. They were his gods,” she said.
Following her escape in 2013 – after memorising the number for an anti-slavery charity she saw on the news – Ms Morgan-Davies said she found joy in the most simple things. “Like having my own key and being able to come and go as I please, and making friends with people,” she said. Judge Deborah Taylor told Balakrishnan that he had committed “grave and serious crimes over a long period of time and you have shown no remorse whatsoever”.
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