In handwritten diaries, which she said she was forced to keep each day, the daughter of Aravindan Balakrishnan recorded what the jury heard was the “unbearable tedium, violence and humiliation” of a life hidden away from the outside world under the control of a man who told her he was God.
As Balakrishnan, 75, sat in the dock of Southwark crown court listening to proceedings through a hearing device, the jury bent their heads to read extracts of his daughter’s diaries. They were written from the age of six or seven until, as an adult of 30, she escaped from what the Crown said was her imprisonment within his communist collective.
The jury heard she was beaten and kicked repeatedly, sometimes on a daily basis, when she fell short of his rules, laughed, made a noise outside his room, failed to sleep at night or fell sick. She also allegedly grew up witnessing his violence to the other women in the collective.
Balakrishnan denies one count of cruelty to a child and the false imprisonment of his daughter. He also denies four rapes of other victims, seven counts of indecent assaults and three counts of assault causing actual bodily harm.
Reading from the diary, Rosina Cottage, QC, prosecuting, described to the jury glimpses of the life of a child who rarely went outside, never played with any other children, had little fresh air, never went to school, was spied upon by other women around her, and had been brainwashed into believing she would die if she ever left the home she knew as “the collective”.
On each diary page, the jury heard, his daughter recorded how many days she had been alive, and often the number of “beats” (beatings) she said she had been given.
Balakrishnan’s daughter, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was a “non person”, Cottage told the court. Registered at birth, she was then hidden away throughout her childhood and early adult life, the court heard.
Each morning the girl was made to sing songs to Balakrishnan in celebration of him, the jury heard. She knew her home as “the collective” or AB’s communist collective family pilot unit.
“She lived an isolated and lonely life and buried her head in books that she was allowed to read, in particular the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Harry Potter,” said Cottage. “She used to write diaries, poems and pages and pages of notes ... sometimes they show the limited scope of her daily existence and the unbearable tedium of her life. Sometimes they show the violence, manipulation and humiliation from the defendant for minor perceived infringements.”
In one entry as a young girl she recorded – as she did every day – how she filled her hours. “Singing, sleeping ... writing, bath, food.” Another records her food as “cornflakes, milk, pitta bread, bananas, milk, omelette and ketchup”.
Cared for “by rota”, she never knew that Sian Davis, one of the women in the collective, was her mother. Davis later died. She did not know that Balakrishnan, whom the women knew as Comrade Bala, was her father. She referred to herself throughout in her writing in the third person as Comrade x.
The diaries recorded how Balakrishnan told her her parents were dead, a tactic the jury heard was to make her a non person and isolate her from the world. She wrote: “Comrade Bala said that Comrade x’s mother and father were martyrs. Comrade Bala said … her mother died giving birth to her and her father died in the People’s War.” On one side of the page she also recorded what she ate that day.
“She is not writing these diaries for herself, she has been told to do this. Everything goes in it and he can read it all, it is not private,” said Cottage.
The first beatings she could remember came at the age of four when she fell ill and began vomiting, the jury heard. “The defendant was angry and stepped on her, put his foot on her face and kicked her head when she was lying on the floor,” said Cottage. “He hit her again and put her outside the door.”
Cottage said the beatings were an almost daily ritual, often carried out with a stick and a ruler. “While he was beating her he would say he was training her to be a good soldier for when he was leader of the world,” she said.
Aged seven the girl wrote “Comrade Bala beat Comrade x for keep laughing when he is here”, and later recorded how he allegedly told her he would carry out “no notice beatings” in future. Another entry read: “Comrade Bala disciplined Comrade x for jumping next to his room. He gave her 13 beats. He said 37 more beats to come.” Another entry recorded how he beat her when she stubbed her toe.
In another entry, when she was seven, she wrote of the punishment she received during her lessons, given by the women in the collective: “Comrade Bala disciplined Comrade x for refusing to write properly.” Another entry, when she was aged 12, she recorded how he sanctioned her by withdrawing all contact. “No hugging, no singing … Comrade Bala said he loved Comrade x 60 percent and hated her 40 percent. Comrade Bala said Comrade x has to atone for her sins for the rest of her life.”
In another entry she recorded how he allegedly threatened her with “arrest, torture and execution” if she did not obey “Comrade Bala’s guidelines”.
Cottage said he had brainwashed the girl into believing she would die if she left the collective, and created a fictitious persona known as Jackie which he used as a threat. “It was drummed into her since she was a girl that he [the defendant] gives life and can take life, that he can exterminate her comrades and cause catastrophe around the world.” He even wrote in her diary: “Wrong ideas can burn you to death.”
As a child who could only be hugged or touched by Balakrishnan, she recorded her childhood joy “at the smallest sign of affection, an unexpected gift and the very occasional trip to a museum or the cinema as she was older”, said Cottage.
“Comrade Bala said Comrade x’s spinning is very good. Comrade Bala said Comrade x can spin the ball very fast and very hard,” she wrote.
Her diary records shortly before her 10th birthday an occasion when she was so desperate to see another face she went to the airing cupboard and poured water into it, hoping the women in the collective would have to call a repair man to fix it, the jury heard. But instead she was disciplined.
“She was put outside by the defendant, who then dragged her back in took off her top … pushed her back outside and the door was slammed and locked. She is about 10, she has been told that bad things happen outside, this would have been terrifying for her to suffer … she thought she would be killed,” said Cottage.
Occasionally she was taken out, always accompanied, sometimes to the Commonwealth Institute, and once to Paddington station. “She was discouraged from playing with any other children and pulled away from people,” said Cottage. “She was so lonely that she started to talk to the toilet and taps. She believed the defendant controlled everything inside and outside the house … sometimes she felt the only way to leave would be to die ... she was a project, the communist collective’s project.”
The trial continues.
