CultNEWS101 Articles: 4/28/2022 (Event, Urantia Book, Aravindan Balakrishnan, Obituary, Trigger Warnings, Maharishi University, Legal)

Event, Urantia Book, Aravindan Balakrishnan, Obituary, Trigger Warnings, Maharishi University, Legal

ICSA Annual Conference: My Father Leader: A Parent Cult from Inside Out

Maria Peregolise; Sunday, June 26, 2022; 1:00 PM-1:50 PM

Culted Child is a memoir by the daughter of a Spiritual Prophet - a father who used the theology of The URANTIA Book as a framework for his secret conversations with her.

Belfast Telegraph: Cult leader's Belfast 'slave' defended evil rapist to the end

"In 2013, Ms Herivel called a charity to tell them that Balakrishnan's daughter was being held against her will, after which the sect was busted."

The Belfast woman who blew the lid off a Maoist cult that held her captive for 30 years was campaigning for its leader's release from prison until his death last week. 
Ex-Methodist College pupil Josephine Herivel was one of several women brainwashed by Aravindan Balakrishnan in his south London commune.
Last week, the 81-year-old died in Dartmoor Prison, where he was serving a 23-year sentence for rape, false imprisonment, child cruelty and assault.
One-time violin prodigy Ms Herivel, the daughter of Bletchley Park code breaker John Herivel, came to regret alerting the authorities and campaigned for his convictions to be quashed.
A small online community still proclaims Balakrishnan's innocence, but Ms Herivel is the only one who has given interviews.
She fell under Balakrishnan's influence in 1978 while studying at the Royal College of Music after attending a communist lecture with her then boyfriend.
She joined Balakrishnan's Workers' Institute of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought, based in a terraced house in Brixton, where followers referred to him as 'Comrade Bala'."

PsyPost: Trigger warnings might prolong the aversive aspects of negative memories

"Trigger warning" is a phrase we hear a lot in daily life now, but how effective is providing a trigger warning in preventing distress? A study published in Memory suggests that trigger warnings could actually be counterproductive and prolong effects of recalling a negative memory.

Trigger warnings are warnings that material may contain sensitive or difficult information that could serve to distress people. Topics can include shootings, sexual violence, racism, classism, and more. These warnings are meant to be considerate, hoping to minimize any negative feelings people may have about what they are about to encounter. Despite the good intentions, there is a possibility that warnings could do the exact opposite and make memories seem more distressing than they are, due to the fact that expecting something negative can cause or worsen distress.

For their study, researchers Victoria M. E. Bridgland and Melanie K. T. Takarangi utilized 209 participants over two sessions. Participants were asked to recall a negative event that took place within the past two weeks. They were separated into two groups: one which were given a warning that this negative memory task would be distressing, and one which were not given a warning. In session two, participants were asked to recall the negative event again. All participants completed measures on positive and negative affect, state-trait anxiety, memory phenomenology coping skills, centrality of the negative event, and emotional impact of events.

Results showed that as predicted, the warning message had a negative anticipatory effect. Despite this, there was no evidence that the warning made the initial recall of the event any more distressing. The distress and negative effects faded over time, which is consistent with previous research, but results did show that participants who were given a warning in session one showed higher impact of the event still during session two. This suggests that the warning did, in fact, "hamper the healing nature of time" and that the warning effects were delayed."

" ... 'In summary, this study is the first to examine the effects of warning messages on the recall of personal memories (rather than novel stimuli) with two important findings: first, we found that warning messages seem capable of prolonging aversive aspects of a negative event," the researchers concluded. "Second, if we turn to what we did not find, warnings do not seem to diminish the distress associated with recalling a negative memory or increase the reported use of coping strategies. These data have important implications for renewed calls to use trigger warnings to improve mental health by adding to the growing body of evidence that trigger warnings at best may have trivial effects or at worst cause harm.'"

Des Moines Register: Donor's wife sues Maharishi University in Fairfield over stock mixup, claiming she lost $500k

"In December 1984, Mary and Phillip Town gave a gift to Maharishi International University: 166,667 shares in their organic farming startup.

But, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court, officials at the Transcendental Meditation school in Fairfield, Iowa, preferred cash. So the Towns gave the school about $21,000 in exchange for the return of the shares, according to the lawsuit.

Mary Town said university officials never properly signed documents turning the shares back over, an issue that came to a head two years ago when an Austrian company bought the business that her husband and a business partner started.

Mary Town's lawyer estimated in a lawsuit filed against the university Thursday that it ultimately received about $500,000 because it was still the registered owner of those shares when the sale went through. She is demanding to be repaid the amount the school received.

"MIU's enrichment was at the expense of Town," her attorney, Jeff Stone of Cedar Rapids, wrote in the lawsuit.

Mark Zaiger, a Cedar Rapids lawyer representing the school, declined to address the details of the allegation.

'MIU does not respond outside of court regarding pending litigation matters," he said in an email to the Des Moines Register. "I can tell you, however, that MIU has a policy to seek resolution of disputes as they arise.'"

 

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Cult leader’s Belfast ‘slave’ defended evil rapist to the end

Woman who denied she was held captive campaigned for release of manipulator who died in jail last week

Christopher Woodhouse

Sunday Life

April 17 2022

The Belfast woman who blew the lid off a Maoist cult that held her captive for 30 years was campaigning for its leader’s release from prison until his death last week.

Ex-Methodist College pupil Josephine Herivel was one of several women brainwashed by Aravindan Balakrishnan in his south London commune.

Last week, the 81-year-old died in Dartmoor Prison, where he was serving a 23-year sentence for rape, false imprisonment, child cruelty and assault.

One-time violin prodigy Ms Herivel, the daughter of Bletchley Park code breaker John Herivel, came to regret alerting the authorities and campaigned for his convictions to be quashed.

A small online community still proclaims Balakrishnan’s innocence, but Ms Herivel is the only one who has given interviews.

She fell under Balakrishnan’s influence in 1978 while studying at the Royal College of Music after attending a communist lecture with her then boyfriend.

She joined Balakrishnan’s Workers’ Institute of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought, based in terraced house in Brixton, where followers referred to him as “Comrade Bala”.

In 2013, Ms Herivel called a charity to tell them that Balakrishnan’s daughter was being held against her will, after which the sect was busted.

Afterwards, she spoke to say she regretted her actions, telling Channel 4: “[He] was a lot like my father, really, and of course my teacher as well because the experience with my father was very bad. What I was doing was diametrically opposed to him.”

Asked if the allegations were untrue, she said: “Yes, absolutely. I know Aravindan Balakrishnan, I know he is such a good person. Anybody who knows him would say the same thing.

“I have nearly 40 years of experience in the collective. I can’t talk like this without knowing.

“It has been my day-to-day experience that he is always showing concern for people, their wellbeing, their development.”

When asked about the testimony of women who said Balakrishnan had been violently abusive, she said: “These are outrageous allegations. They didn’t happen. I sincerely believe he has been framed and I am very angry about it.”

Ms Herivel denied knowing anything about Balakrishnan’s sexual activity with other members of the group and was adamant she was not held as a slave.

In 2016, she told The Guardian: “I have to help clear [his] name. It’s such an injustice. It’s wrong.”

However, Balalkrishnan’s daughter Katy Morgan-Davies has frequently spoken about her time in the cult, which she described as “dehumanising and degrading”.

“The people he looked up to were people like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Saddam Hussein. You couldn’t criticise them,” she said.

“They were his gods and his heroes. These were the sort of people he wanted to emulate.”

One of the strangest details of Balakrishnan’s group to emerge during his trial at Southwark Crown Court was an unseen device he called Jackie.

He convinced members of the group that it had the power to control minds, global events and even kill people.

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/cult-leaders-belfast-slave-defended-evil-rapist-to-the-end-41559689.html

CultNEWS101 Articles: 9/11-12/2021

Group Psychological Abuse, Satanic Temple, Freedom of Religion, Legal, Conversion Therapy, LGBT, Scientology, Ireland, Legal, Aravindan Balakrishnan, UK

NCBI: The Negative Impact of Group Psychological Abuse on Life Satisfaction and Well-being

""In the context of the adverse effects of psychological abuse, this study examined satisfaction with life, psychological well-being, and social well-being in survivors of social groups that are high-demand, manipulative, totalitarian, or abusive toward their members. We specifically tested the mediating role between group psychological abuse and current well-being of psychological stress suffered after leaving the group. An online questionnaire was administered to 636 Spanish-speaking former members of different groups, 377 victims of group psychological abuse and 259 nonvictims. Participants reporting group psychological abuse showed significantly lower levels of life satisfaction, psychological well-being, and social well-being compared to nonvictims. Greater differences in well-being between victims and nonvictims were related to positive relationships with others (d = .85), self-acceptance (d = .51), social integration (d = .44), and social acceptance (d = .41). Victims' life satisfaction and well-being were positively correlated with the time that has passed since leaving the group, but nonsignificant effects were found regarding the type of the group (i.e., religious vs. nonreligious), the age at which they joined the group (i.e., born into or raised in the group vs. during adulthood), the length of group membership, and the method of leaving (i.e., personal reflection, counseled, or expelled). Moderate associations were found between group psychological abuse, psychological stress, and well-being measures, and results demonstrated that psychological stress mediated the impact of group psychological abuse on life satisfaction and well-being. Understanding the negative impact of group psychological abuse on well-being is important to promote survivors' optimal functioning during their integration process into the out-group society."

Salon: Why Satanists may be the last, best hope to save abortion rights in Texas

"The "nontheistic" organization joins the fray with a last-ditch legal maneuver to save abortion rights in Texas.

"As pro-choice and reproductive health groups are scrambling to make sense of Texas' new, near-total abortion ban that went into effect this week, it appears their efforts to skirt the law are getting an unexpected boost from one organization in particular: The Satanic Temple.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday night allowed the state to implement a ban on the procedures after six weeks, before most women know they are pregnant, with no carve-outs for rape or incest. Until it is blocked or overturned, the law effectively nullifies the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision — which established abortion as a constitutional right — in Texas.

Enter The Satanic Temple.

The "nontheistic" organization, which is headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, joined the legal fray this week by sending a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration demanding access to abortion pills for its members. The group has established an "abortion ritual," and is attempting to use the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (which was created to allow Native Americans access to peyote for religious rituals) to argue that its members should be allowed access to abortion drugs like Misoprostol and Mifepristone for religious purposes.

"I am sure Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton—who famously spends a good deal of his time composing press releases about Religious Liberty issues in other states—will be proud to see that Texas's robust Religious Liberty laws, which he so vociferously champions, will prevent future Abortion Rituals from being interrupted by superfluous government restrictions meant only to shame and harass those seeking an abortion," Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves told the San Antonio Current. 

"The battle for abortion rights is largely a battle of competing religious viewpoints, and our viewpoint that the nonviable fetus is part of the impregnated host is fortunately protected under Religous Liberty laws," he added."

LGBTQ Nation: Conversion therapists will have to stop trying to turn kids straight after losing a federal lawsuit to therapy.

"Brian Tingley filed a federal lawsuit this past May that accused Washington state of violating his First Amendment free speech and free religious exercise rights by banning conversion therapy for minors.

Calling the conversion therapy ban "the Counseling Censorship Law," Tingley argued that even mental health professionals have a constitutionally protected free speech right, even if they are using a state-issued license to pass off personal beliefs as professional assessments. He also said that the law discriminates against him because he's Christian.

He insisted that the children he tries to change want to be changed and that they have a right to treatment, even if that treatment has been scientifically shown to be ineffective and harmful."

Business Post: Church of Scientology offshoot spent €2m on Meath drug rehab facility

Narconon Trust bought the property in Ballivor, Co Meath in 2016, but it's 56-bed drug rehabilitation service has yet to open due to a planning battle.

"Narconon, an offshoot of the Church of Scientology, has spent close to €2 million establishing its Meath "drug treatment" facility, newly-filed financial statements show.

Narconon Trust bought the property in Ballivor, Co Meath in 2016, but it's 56-bed drug rehabilitation service has yet to open due to a planning battle. The High Court ruled in its favour last year, but the matter has been appealed to the Supreme Court."

OpIndia: Aravindan Balakrishnan and his Maoist cult in London: The sordid tale of exploitation, abuse and brainwashing

"A woman who was held captive by her cult leader father for over three decades has recently opened about travails she endured during her period of captivity at the Communist Collective, a cult in south London founded by her father, Aravindan Balakrishnan, and how she escaped it.

For the first three decades of her life, Katy Morgan-Davies, now 38, was held as a slave under the total control of her father, Aravindan Balakrishnan, a self-styled leader called by his followers as 'Comrade Bala' or 'Comrade B'. Balakrishnan ruled over his daughter and six other women 'comrades' with the use of violence and by inducing psychological terror in his captives.

In 2013, at the age of 30, Davies managed to escape her father's Maoist cult, known by its followers as the Communist Collective, in Brixton, south London. Eight years later, she has shared her experience of her life under a cult leader for over three decades in a telltale interview with The Sunday Times."

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Fright without solution?

The Cult Next Door

The Psychologist

March 2017

Dr Alexandra Stein watches BBC Two's 'The Cult Next Door'.

Time and again we hear vivid accounts of the trauma of those held captive in cultic situations. Once again, this week, I watched another of these: a poignant series of interviews with survivors of a tiny London-based cult led by Aravindan Balakrishnan supposedly devoted to the revolution and the unlikely scenario of eventual liberation by Mao’s communist forces. Of the handful of women who were held captive by him in a flat in Brixton, two died and one was born and raised – for 30 years – in this impossible environment.

Although a moving programme, The Cult Next Door, like so many others, had little to offer in helping the viewer understand how such things can happen. Yet it is not beyond our understanding. These situations are extreme versions of the same dynamics that we know as Stockholm Syndrome or that we see in cases of controlling domestic violence (as has been recently addressed by the 2015 law criminalising coercive control). This law is as good a place as any to start understanding this phenomenon which consists of: ‘a purposeful pattern of behaviour which takes place over time in order for one individual to exert power, control or coercion over another’. This law limits criminalisation of this behaviour to that which occurs in an intimate or family relationship. However I argue that in any cult, the cult becomes the intimate or family relationship and that therefore this law should also apply to criminalising the extreme levels of control we see in these groups.

As noted in the programme, any normal family ties were broken – between those inside and outside of the cult, and within the cult. In particular, and most moving, Katie Morgan-Davies, who was born in it, was prevented from knowing that Balakrishnan and Sian Davies, another member, were her parents. As a baby she was not allowed to be cuddled, except by the leader. As one former captive said, ‘Bonds were not encouraged with Katie’. And in general there was, as in so many cults, an edict not to be attached to family.

Meanwhile Balakrishnan exerted complete control over every aspect of life and punished the women with beatings and threats, warning them against escape with dire curses of what would happen to them in the outside world.

In my own analysis which I detail in my new book, Terror, Love and Brainwashing, I draw on John Bowlby’s attachment theory and Mary Main’s extension of this, by using the lens of disorganised attachment to clarify the behaviours of the psychopathic leaders who create these oppressive systems and the effects on those within them.

Put simply this states that a situation of ‘fright without solution’ is set up in these groups. All previous ties with family and friends are broken off, then the now-isolated follower is engulfed within the cult through a variety of means (endless meetings, prayers, work, chanting, meditation, study, etc.) and, finally, the cult leader creates a chronic sense of threat – of the outside world, an apocalyptic future, of potential punishment, of one’s inner sin, failure, or badness. Having removed all of a follower’s previous ‘safe havens’ to whom they might turn when fearful, the cult leader presents themselves or the cult as proxy, as the only remaining safe haven.

But turning for comfort to the source of fear is maladaptive – it creates 'fright without solution' rather than calming the feelings of fear. There are two effects from this. First is the tendency to remain seeking comfort from the fear-arousing figure (in the absence of any other) and thus bonding to that figure – what we can call a trauma or disorganized bond. Second, 'fright without solution' or chronic trauma can result in dissociation – a cognitive freeze state - regarding the frightening situation. This means the person literally cannot think about their condition.

These effects are powerful and disabling. It is critical for therapists and other professionals to learn about and to understand this in order to help victims. Without appropriate help the disorganised bond and the frozen cognitive state in regard to the group can last for many years even after leaving. It is a state of complex post-traumatic stress – also well-documented in Judith Herman’s classic 1992 book Trauma and Recovery.

Programmes such as The Cult Next Doorare valuable as case studies, but I continue to hope that future programmes add some analysis – without this we risk becoming voyeurs to terrible human suffering rather than increasing public awareness and knowledge in order to prevent future tragedies.

- Watch the programme now. 

Reviewed by Dr Alexandra Stein(Birkbeck, University of London), whose new book is Terror, Love and Brainwashing. She is also author of Inside Out, her 2002 ‘Memoir of Entering and Breaking Out of a Minneapolis Political Cult’.

https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/fright-without-solution

The Cult Next Door BBC Documentary 2017

This documentary by acclaimed director Vanessa Engle tells the extraordinary story of a strange cult, which came to light in 2013 when a sensational news story broke about three women emerging from a small flat in Brixton in south London after decades in captivity. Tracing the group back to its roots in the 1970s, the film describes how its leader Aravindan Balakrishnan, a student of Indian origin, believed in an international communist revolution and created a tiny political sect that followed the teachings of China's Chairman Mao.

The film features exclusive interviews with two of the women who escaped - Aisha Wahab, a 72-year-old Malaysian woman who was part of Balakrishnan's group for 40 years, and Katy Morgan-Davies, Balakrishnan's daughter, who was born and raised in captivity. The film documents how this left-wing collective evolved into a bizarre pseudo-religious cult, where members were controlled, threatened and brainwashed so that they were too terrified to leave.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxydfxnFEmE&feature=youtu.be

One Woman’s Story of Assault by her ‘Guru’ of Religious Cult

The News Minute
The Quint
August 27, 2017

She was inside the ‘guru’s’ room. The privilege of cleaning his room and touching his belongings had been bestowed upon her yet again, and she was delighted. Until, the guru who was in the room, suddenly hugged her. As he held her close, she panicked and ran out.

But, she was told that the guru was not sexually harassing her, it was his exalted soul reaching out to her soul that deserved to be elevated.

The guru’s first ‘blessings’ were the start of her long nightmare.

As a 25-year-old working in a multinational in 2007, Veena* had everything going for her. She had a flourishing career where the money was good, and a loving husband.

And yet, she felt there was something amiss.

On the surface, I had everything. I had all the reasons to be happy. But at some point, I realised that just looking after myself was not enough. I had grown up believing that life has a higher purpose. So, I thought, ‘can I do more with my degree? Can I use my knowledge to help people?’ - Veena

Little did she know then that this yearning would drag her down a dark path, one from which she is still struggling to recover.

Joining A Cult

During a trip home in a state in South India the same year, Veena first came across ‘guruji’ on a spiritual channel her parents were watching. He was a Hindu godman, touted as a brahmachari. She was instantly impressed.

He was talking about dealing with challenges in life. What struck me most was the way he spoke. It was very clear, sensible, and funny. - Veena

Since guruji’s ashram was nearby, she decided to pay a visit.

“It seemed like a nice place. Very peaceful and spiritual, bereft of any grandeur. He was travelling abroad then, and I couldn't personally meet him. I picked up some books on meditation from the ashram,” she says.

The books were in essence similar to most spiritual books — they revolved around expressing love, finding happiness and contentment. “It appealed to me because it was not close minded or too religious. Perhaps anyone who practices these may find peace,” she now thinks.

To top that, guruji’s disciples would make anyone around him think that the energy they felt was merely because of their leader’s presence. And yet, it was never in-your-face. “As I understood later, the technique used was a very subtle psychological influence.” And it worked, because a year later, the educated, independent woman quit her job to work full-time for guruji.

Though the common misconception is that only crazy, unstable, or weird people join cults, a paper published in the Cultic Studies Journal by Janja Lalich has shown that most cult members are of above-average intelligence, come from stable backgrounds, and do not have a history of psychological illness.

“Cult leaders and cult recruiters tend to capture the hearts, minds, and souls of the best and brightest in our society,” the research says.

“A Marketing Guy”

India has no dearth of self-styled godmen, and there have been a string of incidents involving gurus, and their alleged role in sexual assault, extortion and cheating.

Our family too had gurus but all of them were revered long after their death. So, it took some time to believe that a living person could also attain the same status. He made us believe he was one of those rare living gurus of our generation. He told us that if we prayed to him, all our wishes would come true. - Veena

She also calls him a great marketing guy. “He just sells himself so well. If you attend one of his programmes, you'll be dying to attend the next one as well.”

The ambience would only add to the aura.

Sucked Into a Vortex

‘Why do you want to quit your job? You are so young. You can do this on the side,’ Veena's concerned family told her when she informed them of her plans to embark on her spiritual journey.

“But I was so sure,” she says. “I felt so strongly about joining a spiritual group to spread happiness and peace through meditation and spirituality.” Soon, she became part of a select group of people who worked closely with the godman and looked after the running of his empire.

It was a big privilege to touch his belongings. One day, I was told that I could clean his room. From then on, I would clean his room every day. During one such occasion, he was there in the room. He hugged me. Not in a way a guru would, but just as a man would hug a woman he was interested in.

A terrified Veena ran out. But she was summoned again, and the guru ‘explained’ to her that mere mortals like her saw ‘human bodies’, while he only saw the soul.

He told me that every avatar of god would find another soul who needed to be elevated. Like Krishna found Radha and blessed her soul. I was his Radha, he said. Normally, after a session, he would hug a few chosen disciples. This included children, young, middle-aged and old people. We were constantly told that he was only touching our soul.

For months, what Veena went through was mental conditioning. She was told that the guru’s touch was only for a select lucky few who were very spiritual souls. The hug had soon progressed to sex and Veena was coerced to believe that it was a path to salvation. She was given the guru’s special blessing whenever he desired it.

“Though he would hug a few of us, he told me not to tell others about our relationship. I was the special one, the only one who was blessed to be his soul mate (have intercourse with him),” she says.

The state of affairs went on for several years. As a young educated woman, why did Veena not walk away from there? Can this be considered sexual assault or rape? Over the years, many have asked her this.

This is how a cult works; this is how power structures work. It was ingrained into us that the guru was supreme and worldly pleasures meant nothing to him. Every time the abuse happened, he would tell me that my soul had become a bit more elevated and I was almost at the next level.

The Bhagavatham and other revered Hindu scriptures were constantly quoted to her. “I was told that though I was a special soul, I was not discovered by a guru in my previous births.”

Wiping Out Evidence

The guru, however, was a clever man, who ensured that there was no trace of evidence. In many cases in India and throughout the world, it has been well documented how such gurus wipe out evidence.

Premananda Swamy convicted in 2005 would facilitate abortions. Aravindan Balakrishnan (a Maoist cult leader) established himself as someone who could control nature and it was proved in a court in UK that he would first isolate victims from families so that they never betrayed his secrets. He was convicted of six counts of indecent assaults and four counts of rape in 2015.


 

Premananda Swamy was convicted in 2005 for sexual assault. 

Another guru in India (according to a victim’s statement to court) used to tell the victim that he would dispose of the condom as his semen was special and no mere mortal should get hold of it. He convinced the victim that his semen should be poured into the ocean.

In Veena’s case too, the guru was careful to keep his assault a secret, and to be discreet. As Veena narrates this, she adds as an afterthought. “All this sounds ridiculous to me now. But when I was in the situation, I was constantly made to believe and accept it as right without questioning.”

Janja Lalich says in her research that cults that exploit people, especially women, project the assault as a matter of honour. “The woman is told that a sexual encounter with the leader is an honour, a special gift, a way of achieving further growth. Sexual activities with the leader are interpreted and rationalised as spiritually beneficial.”

The Guru and Disciples

Every disciple shared a unique relationship with the guru and all of them were strictly prohibited from discussing it among each other. Veena says, “To some he was a mother figure, for some it was a master-sevak relationship. And it was up to him to decide which relationship was ‘right’ for which person.”

People from all walks of life would throng to see him. Some were just like her, wanting to make the world a better place, and a few quite like him, manipulating people for their gain.

The Exploitation

Going against the guru is the greatest of sins, they were told. They would repent, not just in their current life but also in their coming lives, if they did so. They would suffer, suffer horribly.

And the best way to prevent a revolt is never giving it a breeding ground in the first place. Cult members were always overworked with assignments and had strict deadlines to follow.

We hardly had time for anything else. We were extremely exhausted and sleep deprived as we slept for not more than four hours a day. No one had the mind to question anything.

If someone did question him, they would immediately be outcast. Threats and intimidation were also used to shut victims up when needed.

The Realisation

As the years passed, Veena also realised how the cult was fuelled solely by its greed. “Only the rich were allowed to personally meet him. If you weren't bringing him business, you were of no use to him,” she says.

There were murmurs of others who were given the guru’s blessings and were forced to become his sexual partners. When the truth finally hit her, and with the intensity that it did, it pushed her into depression.

I was in a state of shock. I kind of just wanted to forget that I had lived this life. But then I realised that many more innocent victims were getting sucked into the cult every day. I felt I must tell what happened to me, so that it can save others.

Seven years after she joined the group, she finally left it. She also filed a complaint with the police and the case in underway in court.

Why Not Quit?

Cults in Our Midst, a book by Margaret Thaler Singer, a clinical psychologist and an expert on brainwashing, and Janja Lalich, an author and researcher, explains how cult groups resort to thought-reform processes and persuasion to control people’s minds.

This book was an eye-opener for Veena as it helped her to understand why a rational person like her would join a cult. It is simple to ask why someone would not leave a cult immediately when they realise they are in a wrong place.

But as Singer and Lalich state, the answer is not that simple. Even though cults mostly don’t use physical restraint on their members, there are several psychological barriers stopping them from walking away. This includes their beliefs, peer pressure, fear or even confusion.

The last few years have been punishing for Veena. The fight has been emotionally, physically and financially draining. Looking back, she says, “Life has taught me many, many lessons and I am very grateful for that. But I still believe I have a bigger purpose in life.”

*Names and places have been changed to protect the identity of the victim.

https://www.thequint.com/india/2017/08/27/one-womans-story-of-assault-by-her-guru-of-religious-cult

Agony of Co Down man who lived next door to sex slaves in communist cult

Belfast Telegraph
By Brett Campbell
January 24, 2017

A Co Down man who lived next door to a bizarre communist cult — where women and a child were held captive for decades — has broken down in tears as he expressed regret for not intervening.

Peter McEvoy lived next door to the secretive cult in Streatham, London for around six years before its infamous leader Aravindan Balakrishnan was evicted.

“My children would be playing in the back garden, making a lot of noise and occasionally we would see a little girl peak out the window,” he said.

“That was all we saw of her, we never saw her outside the house.”

Mr McEvoy, from Drumaness, moved to London in the early 1980s and later settled in Streatham with wife Antoinette and their two kids.

“Looking back it seems so obvious but I really had no idea what was happening in that house.

“Bala would only leave the house with two women to go to the shops but they never spoke to anyone. He was very shrewd,” said the 57-year-old.

Mr McEvoy is also featured in a new BBC documentary telling the story of the cult which was only exposed in 2013 when Belfast-born devotee Josephine Herivel escaped the Brixton flat where the group had relocated.

In the film Mr McEvoy describes how the front and back garden of the Streatham house was overgrown with weeds stretching up to 4ft high allowing the twisted guru and his devoted followers to live in relative obscurity. “The curtains were never opened at any time at all, at the front or back of the house,” he said.

“The only time you would see them is when the little girl would turn around and pop her head up and then back down again,” he said.

In the film he bows his head and sobs, wipes tears from his face, and says: “It’s just the thought of what that child has gone through and at the time I just didn’t do anything about it and I’m so sorry that I didn’t.

“I didn’t know what was happening, but if I did I definitely would have done something about it.”

The disturbing Maoist collective was founded by Aravindan Balakrishnan and its roots go back to the 1970s when the deluded leader first began brainwashing people into believing that he was the all-powerful, immortal ruler of the world.

‘Comrade Bala’ convinced his followers that he had an electronic machine — called Jackie — which was a supernatural force that enabled him to control nature.

Membership had dwindled to just three women when it was discovered and included Balakrishnan’s daughter, Katy Morgan-Davies.

Katy had been ill with undiagnosed diabetes when former child musical prodigy and Belfast Methodist College student, Josephine Herival, masterminded an escape plan.

She memorised an anti-slavery helpline number and smuggled a mobile phone into the flat.

Josie Herival, who dropped out of London’s Royal College of Music in the 1970s in order to pledge allegiance to the crazed cult leader, did not participate in the film.

But she has previously revealed that she now regrets exposing the cult.

Following comrade Bala’s conviction for child cruelty, false imprisonment, four counts of rape, and six counts of indecent assault, Josie insisted that the court had got it wrong and remains actively engaged in attempts to clear his name.

In the new documentary Katy, who had spent her childhood and youth in captivity being indoctrinated with her abusive father’s absurd ideas, said she now pities Belfast woman Josie.

“I am sad for Josie but that’s her choice.

“I am sad she can’t free her mind from the spell of the cult.”

But Katy also expressed a desire to be reconciled with her father who was jailed in January 2016 for 23 years.

The story of ‘The Cult Next Door’ is told by Vanessa Eagle and will air on BBC2 at 9pm on January 26.



http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/sunday-life/news/agony-of-co-down-man-who-lived-next-door-to-sex-slaves-in-communist-cult-35394124.html

Woman describes being held captive by London cult for 30 years

Toby Meyjes

Metro.co.uk
18 Jan 2017

As a child, Katy Morgan-Davies sought solace in her bathroom tap.

‘I used to tell the tap, “You are on my side,”‘ she says. ‘I’d kiss the tap. I’d hug the toilet when the flush worked.’

Her comments are a telling example of the brutal upbringing the now 33-year-old faced having being born into a Maoist cult that its leader intended to rule the world.

Katy would spend 30 years trapped in the commune in Brixton before she was finally able to escape in 2013.

Her captor Aravindan Balakrishnan, who she would discover after her escape was her father, was jailed last year for 23 years for rape and false imprisonment spanning several decades.

He ruled the the cult, mainly made up of women, through violence and threats, including of an all-knowing electronic satellite called Jackie.

The story of his brutal cult, that existed in an ordinary looking London flat, is being retold for the the BBC’s The Cult Next Door, seen by the Mail.

Its members were brainwashed to believe that their behaviour was responsible for disasters, such as the Challenger explosion or the Kobe earthquake.

Balakrishnan would administer beatings to his devotees and force them to carry out sexual acts – telling them lightning would strike them dead if they stepped outside.

Katy was conceived because Balakrishnan – Comrade Bala – wanted someone to run the world with him, according to his communist doctrine.

Her mother, was another member of The Collective, called Sian Davies. She died in 1996 after falling from a window, while, Katy believes, she was trying to escape.

Katy, however, had no idea that Sian was her parent, as the rules of the cult dictated that there were no ‘mothers’ or .’fathers’.

Perversely, she told the documentary that she actually felt a sense of relief at her death, because she was one of the ‘worst servants of Bala’.

The cult’s rules forbid contact between anyone except Bala. Another woman who escaped the cult, Aishah Wahab, now 72, told the programme that she had been punished after trying to comfort Katy after she wet herself.

Bala controlled every aspect of his followers lives – what they ate and what they wore, and also what they thought. He raped at least two of them.

Katy was brought up wearing gender-neutral clothes, without toys or contact with other children. She barely if ever went to the doctor or dentist, being taught NHS meant Never Help Self.

She was taught if she rebelled against Bala then everyday objects would rebel too, hence why she was amazed when light switches worked or toilets flushed.

She managed to escape in 2005, aged 22, but after approaching police officers at her local station, was persuaded to let them call Bala, who turned up and reassured them ‘all was well’.

Eventually, she would flee with other members of the commune in 2013, after smuggling in a mobile phone and calling a helpline.

But despite everything she’s been through, Katy is determined to live a normal life. She has enrolled at college and now lives in her own flat.

Incredibly, she she says she does not hate her captor.

‘I did used to hate him,’ she said. ‘I just felt completely powerless.

‘But life is also very short. There is no time to be spent on hatred and anger.’

‘I would like to reconcile with him in the future’ she added. ‘If he wants it’.

The Cult Next Door is on BBC2 on January 26 at 9pm.



http://metro.co.uk/2017/01/18/woman-kept-captive-by-brutal-london-cult-leader-for-30-years-speaks-out-6388320/

THIRTY YEARS IN CAPTIVITY

One woman’s escape from a London cult.

The New Yorker
By Simon Parkin
DECEMBER 3, 2016

Rosie grew up in a succession of decrepit houses in South London with one man and a rotating cast of women, who claimed that they had found her on the streets as an infant. The man, Aravindan Balakrishnan—Comrade Bala, as he wanted to be called—was the head of the household. He instructed the women to deny Rosie’s existence to outsiders, and forbade them from comforting her when she cried. “Balakrishnan told us that lesbianism was caused when females cuddle female babies,” one of the women, Aisha Wahab, told me recently. “No one dared show affection.” Rosie was not registered with local authorities, health-care providers, or schools. As a child, she often stood by a window, hoping that passersby would notice her. Once, after she exchanged greetings with the granddaughter of an elderly neighbor through a hole in the garden fence, Balakrishnan warned her that the girl intended to lure her away to be held hostage. He regularly lost his temper with Rosie, beating her and threatening to kill her. Sometimes, after an argument, she would retreat to the bathroom, to check whether the toilet still flushed. “When it worked, I kissed the handle,” Rosie, who is now thirty-three, recalled earlier this year. “I told it, ‘Thank you for being on my side.’ ”

One day in 1995, when Rosie was twelve, Balakrishnan showed her an identification card from the hospital where she was born. In a box marked “relationship to child,” Sian Davies, one of the women living in the house, had written “mother.” The revelation sat strangely in Rosie’s mind; at the time, she explained, she “didn’t have a concept of parents.” One night the following December, she was asleep in her bedroom when she heard shouting below. She ran downstairs to see Davies, whom Balakrishnan had caught trying to visit her family for Christmas, bound and gagged by the front door. The next day, Christmas Eve, the women found Davies in the back yard; she had fallen from a window on the second floor of the house and broken her neck on the concrete below. She was taken to King’s College Hospital. “Bala didn’t visit the first day,” Rosie told me. “He said that he wanted Sian to think she was abandoned. That would make her pull up her socks and start to think about what she’d done.” Later, Balakrishnan began making weekly visits, bringing Rosie with him. One day in the spring, as they stood to leave, she ventured, “Bye-bye, mummy.” Davies replied, “Bye-bye, baby.”

Rosie remembers being wary of wrongly reading the moment. “Sometimes you can call somebody ‘baby’ and it doesn’t mean they have to be your actual child,” she told me. Having spent three decades of her life in the commune, she has a way of talking that can seem startlingly literal. She escaped in 2013, at the age of thirty, with the assistance of Yvonne Hall and Gerard Stocks, the husband-and-wife founders of the Palm Cove Society, which provides support for victims of human trafficking and domestic abuse. Jenny Cutler, a consultant forensic psychologist for the United Kingdom’s National Crime Agency, was one of the first people to interview her after her escape. “She had an excellent vocabulary and was able to articulate interesting perspectives on the world,” Cutler told me. “But she also had a scarily underdeveloped understanding of the kinds of social behaviors people tend to acquire from early childhood—almost a pre-pubescent level.” According to Hall, Rosie was largely unable to function outside the house. She didn’t know how to cross roads safely, or to ask for change in shops. She’d misjudge social cues, flinging her arms around new people she met, occasionally telling strangers how attractive she found them.

Still, Rosie learned quickly. “We expected her to live with us for no more than two years,” Hall said. “She moved out in fourteen months.” In that time, she changed her name from Rosie to Katherine and adopted her mother’s family names. Now Katy Morgan-Davies has her own apartment in Leeds and takes classes in English and mathematics at a local college. She seems a cheerful sort of person, with a friendly, open face framed with riotous curls. Balakrishnan, meanwhile, is serving a twenty-three-year prison sentence, having been found guilty, late last year, of child cruelty, false imprisonment, and sexual assault against two women. (Several calls to Balakrishnan’s attorney went unreturned.)

Morgan-Davies’s visit to the hospital in the spring of 1997 was her last. Four months later, her mother died, at the age of forty-four. Sian Davies had been a vengeful chaperone, regularly reporting her daughter’s misbehavior, however slight, to Balakrishnan. “It sounds horrible to say, but I almost felt relieved,” Morgan-Davies recalled. “I actually got a lot more freedom.” But, ultimately, her situation did not improve. Denied real autonomy, she began, in the next seventeen years, to see herself as an “unperson,” trapped by the man who, shortly after his arrest, was confirmed by a police DNA test to be her father. Cutler often works with victims of modern slavery, a legal category that includes many forms of exploitation—sex trafficking, forced labor, organ harvesting—but is largely defined by imprisonment. Morgan-Davies’s case, she said, is unique. “It was phenomenal damage to do to a child,” Cutler told me.

When Aravindan Balakrishnan was growing up, in Kerala, in southern India, his mother often warned him not to curse people when he was angry. According to Morgan-Davies, she believed that her eldest son possessed occult powers, and nicknamed him Black Tongue; later, as an adult, Balakrishnan would boast that he could set people aflame by looking at them. He was a good student, and won a British Council scholarship, at the age of twenty-three, to study at the London School of Economics. When he arrived in England’s capital, in 1963, dozens of far-left organizations were seeking recruits from among London’s poorer, immigrant-heavy neighborhoods, attempting to rally them in the face of a nationalistic right wing. By 1967, Balakrishnan had suspended his studies at the university and joined the Communist Party of England. He was later expelled for pursuing “conspiratorial and splittish activities.”

Balakrishnan persuaded a small group of people—including Chanda Pattni, a classmate from Tanzania, whom he later married—to follow him. Together, they founded their own party, the Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. It was headquartered on Acre Lane, in South London’s Brixton neighborhood, at a bookshop that Balakrishnan dubbed the Mao Memorial Centre. The place was spacious, its shelves packed with red-jacketed revolutionary literature, its windows covered with Chinese flags. Balakrishnan’s followers wore Mao jackets and caps studded with Mao badges, and they once held a celebration on the Chairman’s birthday. Eventually, they moved in to a communal house in Clapham, South London. “All the people who were there were vulnerable in different ways,” Morgan-Davies said. “They were at the end of their rope, and they came to him. He was like their savior.”

Pattni lived in the Clapham house, as did Sian Davies, who had studied law in Wales before moving to London, and Wahab, who was originally from Malaysia. There was also Josie Herivel, the well-off daughter of John Herivel, one of the Bletchley Park scientists who helped to break the Nazis’ Enigma code during the Second World War. A wunderkind violinist, she had abandoned her career in 1976, after attending one of Balakrishnan’s lectures. “I grew up with my father, who was supposed to have one of the best brains in Britain, but my mind was not excited,” Herivel, who was not available for comment for this article, told the Guardian earlier this year. “Aravindan really excited my mind.” Balakrishnan’s sister-in-law, Shobna, gave the commune social cover. She was confined to a wheelchair, and when outsiders invited the women over, Morgan-Davies told me, caring for Shobna was their excuse to stay home.

Inside the house, Balakrishnan enforced control by encouraging rivalries among the women and keeping them financially dependent. He warned them that if they strayed, an invisible machine would punish them. He called it jackie, an acronym of Jehovah, Allah, Christ, Krishna, and the Immortal Easwaran—the last of these being a scholar and spiritual teacher from Kerala. If any of the women tried to flee, Balakrishnan said, jackie would zap them with lasers. If they had disloyal thoughts, jackie would make the household appliances go haywire.

In 1979, Pattni fell into a diabetic coma and was hospitalized for several weeks. Balakrishnan turned his attention on some of the other women. Two of them, whom he was later convicted of sexually abusing, fled. A third, Davies, became pregnant with Katy. When Pattni recovered from her coma, Balakrishnan told her that the conception was the result not of an affair but of “electronic warfare.”

Morgan-Davies’s childhood was defined by isolation. One reprieve, however, came in the form of Balakrishnan’s personal library. “There were books about psychology, books about philosophy, books about politics,” she told me. “But he never used to read them. He just used to put them there for show.” The women taught Morgan-Davies to read and write, and the books gave her characters with whom to populate her imagination. When she cooked, she would pretend that she was feeding sick luminaries. “I’d read about how poorly Churchill had been after he had his stroke,” she recalled. “So I imagined that I was helping him to get well.”

Balakrishnan was an avid watcher of films and TV. In 2001, when Morgan-Davies was nineteen, he saw a trailer for the first “Harry Potter” movie and decided that the boy wizard’s story reflected his own. “I think that he thought he’d let me read the book so that I’d come to understand him better,” Morgan-Davies told me. Later, Balakrishnan saw the final installment of Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. According to Morgan-Davies, he immediately identified with the character of Aragorn, the long-lost heir to the throne of Gondor. “He let me read that as well, because it was part of his self-promotion,” Morgan-Davies said. But she drew her own conclusions about the texts. “I started to see that the way Bala was behaving, the way he was talking, doesn’t sound like Harry and Aragorn at all. It sounds like Voldemort and Sauron. Once I got that idea in my head, I just couldn’t get it out.”

In 2005, when Morgan-Davies was twenty-two, she made her first attempt at escape, slipping out the back door while Balakrishnan was taking one of his long baths and making her way to the local police station. She told the reception officer that she had run away from home. “I didn’t mention the violence, because I didn’t want any trouble for anybody,” she told me; two decades of punishment had instilled in Morgan-Davies a distaste for any kind of retribution. The police, believing the problem to be little more than a family dispute, phoned Balakrishnan and told him to come and collect Morgan-Davies. When they followed up, a few days later, she was forced to take the call from the living room, as the eavesdropping commune stood in a semicircle around her. (Had she been a minor, Hall told me, the police might have asked more questions.)

The cult moved to a new apartment, three miles to the north. There, Morgan-Davies fell into a depression. By New Year’s Day of 2008, she had given up hope. The following August, however, the dynamics in the house changed. Balakrishnan’s sister-in-law was diagnosed with cancer, and Herivel, by then in her late fifties, was required to do more and more work around the house. Morgan-Davies spied an opportunity, and began the three-year process of turning Herivel into an ally. “I used to console her,” she said. “I was just weakening, weakening, working on her. She started getting soft toward me, bit by bit.” Meanwhile, Morgan-Davies’s own health deteriorated. Having carefully watched Pattni’s experience with diabetes, she began to suspect that she was suffering from the same disease. There was no chance of receiving medical treatment, because Balakrishnan forbade it; in 2004, he had allowed another of his followers, Oh Kareng, to die of a head injury she sustained in the house rather than call her an ambulance. “I remember telling Josie in early 2013 that, one way or another, I am going to be out of this cult by the end of 2014,” Morgan-Davies said. “Either as a free person or in a coffin.”

It was Herivel who ultimately arranged for Morgan-Davies’s rescue, using a mobile phone that she secretly bought with the change left over from her grocery allowance. One night in October of 2013, she and Morgan-Davies saw a report on the BBC’s six-o’clock news about forced marriages, which ended with a help-line number flashing onscreen. The women memorized it, and eventually made contact with the Palm Cove Society. A few weeks later, Morgan-Davies and Herivel fled the house while Balakrishnan and his wife were out shopping. Hall and Stocks, who were waiting with a police officer in a parked car near the house, removed them to safety.

Although Herivel’s concern for Morgan-Davies’s health drove her to plan the escape, by the time that Balakrishnan’s trial concluded, in January of this year, she had come to regret her decision. When the guilty verdicts were read out in court, she shouted, “You’re sending an innocent man to prison! Shame on you!” That day, Detective Chief Superintendent Tom Manson of the Metropolitan Police spoke of his hope that the judgment would bring Balakrishnan’s victims “some comfort and, perhaps, closure.” Stocks has a different take. “For me, all of the adults that were in that house from the moment Katy was born are culpable,” she said. “They’re all perpetrators. They are victims as well, of course. Only one went to prison, but to my mind there should have been others.”

Certainly damage has been inflicted that, in Cutler’s estimation, cannot be undone. “There are aspects of Katy’s development that will always impact her,” she said. Yet, when it comes to the appropriate punishment for Balakrishnan’s crimes, Morgan-Davies is magnanimous. She knows that he had to be convicted, she told me, but she doesn’t want him to spend so long in prison. “I was not treated as a human being, so I’m passionate that no one else should ever be treated that way,” Morgan-Davies said. “Even Bala himself.”

Simon Parkin is a contributing writer for newyorker.com and the author of “Death by Video Game: Danger, Pleasure, and Obsession on the Virtual Frontline.”

http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/thirty-years-in-captivity

Inside the lair where cult leader imprisoned his daughter and brainwashed his followers

FROZEN in time, this is the cluttered council flat where Maoist cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan imprisoned his daughter and brainwashed his followers.

JAMES FIELDING
Sunday Express
April 10, 2016

These exclusive pictures from inside the property were taken last week, the first time anyone had stepped inside since the police raid 18 months ago.

They provide the first glimpse of what life was like in the secretive sect before the 75-year-old leader was jailed for a string of sexual assaults and violence.

In the cramped bedroom Balakrishnan shared with his wife Chandra, stacks of books, magazine and newspaper articles are piled between two single beds.

One is The Strange Death Of David Kelly which concludes that rather than suicide the Government’s respected weapons expert, found dead in woods near his home in 2003, was most likely murdered.

Elsewhere in the three-bedroom flat in Brixton, south London, a rainbow bedspread, posters of dogs and cats and cutout dinosaurs glued on to a wardrobe show how Balakrishnan’s daughter Rosie was kept in a perpetual childlike state, even though she had turned 30.

"Aravindan is 75 and should be with friends and family" - Josephine Herivel

The sparsely decorated flat has few mod cons. There is only one television set, an old model with a 14-inch screen, and no cooker or washing machine.

Balakrishnan, dubbed Comrade Bala, was jailed for 23 years in January for child cruelty, false imprisonment, four counts of rape, six counts of indecent assault and two counts of assault.

His wife Chandra, 67, also arrested but later released without charge, continues to support her husband and visits him at Wandsworth prison twice a month.

Speaking outside her former home, to which she returned for the first time since the raid, she said: “He’s lost a lot of weight but his spirit is starting to lift a little. I think he’s been in complete shock at what has happened over the past few months. He is still numb, to be honest.

The 75-year-old leader was jailed for a string of sexual assaults and violence

“When I last saw him he told me that he had been taking classes in Hinduism. He is sharing a cell with a 73-year-old man. They have a television in the cell and Aravindan watches the evening news most days. He also reads newspapers to keep in touch with the outside world.”

Balakrishnan set up The Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism Mao Zedong Thought in 1974 to plan for a Chinese invasion of Britain ordered by Chairman Mao.

His daughter Rosie, now living in the north of England under a new name, was born after a fling with follower Sian Davies, who later died after falling from an upstairs window of a flat in London in 1997.

In court Rosie told how her father kept her under virtual house arrest for her entire life. She never went to school and said she was not allowed to have friends.

Two years ago she secretly contacted an anti-slavery charity who in turn alerted the police. In November 2013, the Metropolitan Police Human Trafficking Unit swooped on the ground-floor Brixton flat.

Rosie, now called Katy Morgan-Davies, was rescued along with Aisha Wahab, 69, and 57-year-old Josephine Herivel. During the investigation, officers became aware of allegations of sexual abuse made by two un-named women and violence against Rosie.

However Ms Herivel, the daughter of Bletchley Park codebreaker John Herivel, claims Balakrishnan is the victim of a miscarriage of justice. After accompanying Chandra to the flat to clear out some of their belongings, she said: “The police have wrecked the place.

“Before all the boxes and folders were stashed away neatly, now they’re all over the floor. This was our home and they’ve shown a complete lack of respect.

“Aravindan is 75 and should be with friends and family, not in prison for something he did not commit.”

Although originally a three-bedroom property, the couple converted the sitting room into a fourth bedroom. In it are thousands of newspaper and magazine articles from around the world, some 10 years old, in folders and boxes.

In Rosie’s room old clothes lie scattered on top of the bed. Among the garments were two polystyrene discs cut from pizza boxes.

On one is a sketch of Harry Potter villain Lord Voldemort with the messages “Worship me or die” and “I love ME only and I hate doves”.

On the other is a reference to neighbour Marius Feneck, whom she is said to have had a fling with. “I love MF & I hate all dark bullies and dark witches.”

The flat is to be re-let by Lambeth Council. Chandra said: “I’d like to come back here because it was my home for eight years. The police have no problem with it but the council has blocked the move and are finding me another property nearby.”

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/659604/Inside-lair-cult-leader-imprisoned-daughter-brainwashed-followers