The Workers’ Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought - a podcast by Sarah Steel

In October of 2013, the British organisation Freedom Charity received a call on their hotline. The woman on the other end said that her housemate had been held captive in South London for 30 years.

At the time of this call, Katy Morgan-Davies was 30 years old, and the period of her imprisonment was her entire life. She, and the women she lived with, believed that an invisible machine called JACKIE could control household appliances, read their thoughts, and would incinerate them if they tried to escape the man they called ‘Comrade Bala’ – who was the covert leader of the world, and, in fact, God himself.

Full research sources listed on each episode page at www.ltaspod.com.

If you have been personally affected by involvement in a cult, or would like to support those who have been, you can find support or donate to Cult Information and Family Support if you’re in Australia (via www.cifs.org.au), and you can find resources outside of Australia with the International Cultic Studies Association (via www.icsahome.com).

If you or someone you know is in crisis or needs support right now, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14 in Australia, or find your local crisis centre via the International Association for Suicide Prevention website at www.iasp.info.

Links:

• Caged Bird — by Katy Morgan-Davies, Random House, 2018
• The Cult Next Door — BBC documentary directed by Vanessa Engle, 2017
• Aravindan Balakrishnan: the Maoist cult leader who used brutal violence and rape to strip women of their dignity — by Victoria Ward, The Telegraph, 4 December 2015
• Thirty Years in Captivity — by Simon Parkin, The New Yorker, 3 December 2016
• The Classification and Dynamics of Sectarian Forms of Organisation: Grid/Group Perspectives on the Far-Left in Britain — by Stephen Frank Rayner, PhD thesis for University College London, 1979
• Statements of the National Executive Committee, CPE (ML) — Transcription, Editing and Markup by Sam Richards and Paul Saba for the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line – first published in The Marxist-Leninist, (Internal Discussion journal of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist)) Vol. 1, No. 1, September 1974
• Maoist cult follower: “I think he’s being framed” — Channel 4 News segment with Josephine Herivel, 4 December 2015
• Maoist cult leader Aravindan Balakrishnan jailed for 23 years — by Hardeep Matharu, the Independent, 29 January 2016
• The radical ideological background of 'slave women' suspects — by Jake Wallis Simons, The Telegraph, 24 November 2013
• Slavery case: suspects named as former Maoist collective...
  

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