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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 here. You can support us on Patreon, with a one-off donation, or grab some merch. Sarah Steel's debut book Do As I Say is available for pre-order now.

If you have been personally affected by involvement in a cult, or would like to support those who have been, contact Cult Information and Family Support in Australia, or the International Cultic Studies Association outside of Australia.

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.

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
• Maoist cult follower: “I think he’s being framed” — Channel 4 News segment with Josephine Herivel, 4 December 2015
• The radical ideological background of 'slave women' suspects — by Jake Wallis Simons, The Telegraph, 24 November 2013

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