Maoist cult leader 'forced women to write sex scripts', court told

Standing trial: Aravindan Balakrishnan
John Stillwell/PA
David Churchill17 November 2015
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A Maoist cult leader forced female followers to write detailed “sex scripts” in order to turn sex into a “weapon” to control them, a court today heard.

The trial of Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, also heard he wanted to “train up a cadre of women soldiers” that could fight “the sugar-coated bullets of bourgeois culture” because females were “the weakest link” in the revolutionary fight.

The fresh claims about life in the Brixton-based commune were made by one alleged woman victim today at Southwark Crown Court. She claims Balakrishnan used mind control before sexually abusing and raping her.

The woman today also told how members who joined the hardline communist cult were forced to handover their passports for “protection” from “state attacks”.

He even demanded she write in her extensive diaries about eating his excrement, she told Southwark Crown Court.

The alleged victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court: “While crying and shivering with fear, and through psychological brutality, he reduced us to shivering wrecks.”

She claims he demanded she write “sex scripts” detailing past relationships to share with other followers and humiliate her.

She told the court: “The way he was getting into your psyche, because you were physically imprisoned within the cult...they [the writings] would become deeper and deeper and he started asking us to write these sex scripts.

“He would be using it to further wipe you down, destroy you and break you into pieces.

“Sex was a weapon of humiliating you and breaking you down so he said he could build you up as a revolutionary.”

The court also heard of her alleged first kiss with the leader before the alleged sexual abuse began. She claimed one day he whispered into her ear to meet him in an upstairs study at night where the commune was based. The kiss lasted about five minutes, the court heard.

Under cross examination she denied it was “willing engagement and consent” and said she had “submitted” to him.

She said: “It was very important to feel praised by him and have his approval and on that basis I felt I was being approved by him. I wasn’t able to say no.

“The sense of your own ability to say yes or no to a situation had been completely removed.

“He exerted great authority, violently and through the self-criticism. He had put himself up as the leader of the great revolution. He reduced people to shivering wrecks.”

She added that, at the time, “it would make life in the cult easier” to kiss him and that her actions were not based on “physical desire” but the “psychological approval for a better living experience in the cult”.

She also told the court how Balakrishnan told her of a conversation he had with his father.

She said: “His father had commented that there seemed to be rather a lot of women around. That was the point that was relayed to us.

“I think Bala was saying that women were the weakest link of bourgeois culture and therefore he needed to concentrate on training up a cadre of women soldiers that could cope with the sugar-coated bullets of bourgeois culture.”

She also told the court: “He said to us we had to give him our passports for protection...from attacks by the state. I do have a clear recollection of handing that over.”

Balakrishnan, of Enfield, north London, denies seven counts of indecent assault and four counts of rape against two women during the 1970s and 1980s.

He also denies three counts of actual bodily harm, cruelty to a child under 16 and false imprisonment. None of his alleged victims can be named for legal reasons.

The trial continues.

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