London slaves: young women were 'willing disciples'

THREE women allegedly held as slaves by a Maoist sect in south London were "willing disciples of its charismatic leader", a former member says.

Dudley Heslop, who was in his early 20s when he attended the group's meetings in the 1970s, told The Times that its followers were "professional revolutionaries who would live and breathe it 24/7". Heslop added that young women were always an important part of the group run by Aravindan Balakrishnan and they willingly "abandoned their careers for him".

"He [Balakrishnan] would say 'I am the Christ, follow me', and people would," said Heslop. "He was never violent, he was too self-controlled."

Police, who interviewed the three women for the first time yesterday, offered a rather different picture of life within the Workers' Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. They say all three were victims of "physical violence and emotional abuse" and were still "traumatised".

Commander Steve Rodhouse, of the Metropolitan Police, said his officers faced a delicate task interviewing the women. "The crucial issue for us is that...  clearly criminal offences have been committed," he said. "We know there has been physical violence, we know there has been emotional abuse. The true nature and frequency of that, we have yet to understand."

Police are also examining files from the inquest into the death of Sian Davies, 44, (pictured above) who died after falling from a window of a house in Herne Hill occupied by the group. Her death, in 1997, was described by a coroner as "mysterious".

It has been revealed that Davies is the mother of the youngest of the three women rescued from the sect's headquarters in Brixton. The 30-year-old's birth certificate says she was named Prem Maopinduzi Davies, but she prefers to call herself Rosie, the Times says.

Sian Davies, the privately-educated daughter of a GP, was studying at the London School of Economics when she joined the Maoists. The Times says she allowed them to move into a house she owned in Battersea and she was "persuaded" to pay £10,000 for the lease of their headquarters in Brixton.

Her cousin, Eleri Morgan, told the paper that Davies' mother had been forced to freeze her daughter's bank account to stop her giving her inheritance to the group. Morgan also revealed that the Davies family had no idea Sian had a daughter and were "overwhelmed and angry" that the sect had kept Rosie a secret.