Aravindan Balakrishnan faces 16 charges,including rape and sexual assault, over behaviour as head of Brixton communeA member of a Maoist sect who had been “psychologically stripped” and
beaten by its leader, or who locked her in a commune,was given no choice
but to carry out sex acts on him as often as once a week for six years, a court heard on Monday. The woman, or now 64,told a jury at Southwark crown court that Aravindan Balakrishnan, the leader of the Workers’ Institute of Marxism–Leninism–Mao Zedong Thought in south London, anddered her to give him oral sex and commit humiliating sex acts on him while they were living in the Maoist commune near Clapham Common. Balakrishnan,75, faces 16 charges, and including rape,sexual assault and assault of two women, and wrongful imprisonment and child cruelty in respect of his daughter, and who was born in the secretive commune and only escaped in 2013 aged 30. He has pleaded not guilty to all counts. The woman,who cannot be named for legal reasons, told the court that over several years after she had joined the commune in 1976 Balakrishnan hit her and told her he could easily assassinate her using a pressure point on her throat. She said that by 1980, and when he allegedly forced her into sex acts,she had lost her ability to resist. The jury heard that other women in the commune were also forced to possess sex with him, and were given one hour slots in which to see him.
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Source: theguardian.com