Cult Leader Aravindan Balakrishnan Jailed for 23 Years

Aravindan Balakrishnan is a cult leader who was jailed for 23 years. Thankfully this case shows that cult leaders are being taken seriously and justice is possible for victims of cult leaders.

Excerpts from the BBC website are enclosed here.

"Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, of Enfield, called himself Comrade Bala and brainwashed his cult into thinking he had god-like powers.

Over 30 years he also raped two of his followers, Southwark Crown Court heard.

His daughter Katy Morgan-Davies said the situation was "horrible, so dehumanising and degrading"."


 "Ms Davies, a GP's daughter from Ceredigion, Wales, fell from a window at the cult's base on Christmas Eve in 1996 and died several months later in hospital

Ms Morgan-Davies said that night she heard screaming and shouting and saw her mother lying in a pool of blood below the bathroom window pleading with Balakrishnan to "kill me".

She said in the subsequent years she would dream of her mother and wake up crying.

Sentencing Balakrishnan, the judge said: "You decided to treat her as a project, not a person.

"You claimed to do it for her to protect her from the outside world, but you created a cruel environment."

Ms Morgan-Davies managed to escape the cult in 2013 after memorising the number for an anti-slavery charity she saw on the news.

She has since moved to Leeds and started an education and said: "I've been a non-person all my life and now is my chance to be myself."

During sentencing the judge recommended that £500 be given to the charity Palm Cove Society, which helped Balakrishnan's daughter escape."