Escaping a Maoist cult

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 April 2022

⏱️ 10 minutes

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Summary

In 2013, three women escaped from a cult that had been based in an ordinary house in Brixton, South London, since the 1970s. The cult was led by Aravindan Balakrishnan, a former student at the London School of Economics, who claimed to be a Maoist revolutionary, but actually brainwashed his followers and kept them prisoner in cruel and violent conditions. The Metropolitan Police said it was the worst case of its kind they had ever seen. Reena Stanton-Sharma talks to Katy Morgan-Davies, one of the women who escaped the cult.

PHOTO: Aravindan Balakrishnan in 2015 (Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless
0:06.8	searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the
0:11.8	telly we share what we've been watching
0:14.0	Cladie Aide.
0:16.0	Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.
0:19.0	Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.
0:21.0	And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less
0:24.9	searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness History podcast with me
0:38.7	Rina Sant and Sharma. Today I'm bringing you the dramatic story of how three women escaped from a Maoist
0:45.2	cult in South London. I've been speaking to one of those women who'd been a
0:49.6	prisoner for three decades.
0:51.6	Police rescue three women who claim they've been held for three
0:53.7	women who claim they've been held as slaves in a house in London for 30 years.
0:59.1	It's November 2013 and the ordeal is finally over for the victims of one of the most evil
1:05.1	cult in British history. The Metropolitan Police say they have never before come
1:09.8	across a case of this magnitude. The youngest of the three women aged 30 may have been
1:15.2	captive in the house in Lambeth all her life. That 30-year-old was Katie
1:21.0	Morgan Davies and she had indeed been born into the cult.
1:24.6	I remember saying in 2013 that I'm going to be out of this place either walking or in a coffin.
1:32.2	Katie and another woman called Josie had spent months
1:35.2	planning their escape from an ordinary looking house in Brixton, South
1:39.2	London. Boredham was so destroying.
	...

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