Katy Morgan-Davies, known as Rosie Davies, spoke up for the first time about her Maoist cult leader father who kept her prisoner for 30 years. He father, Aravindan Balakishnan, a communist known as Comrade Bala, brainwashed his followers into worshiping him. Aged 75, Balakrishnan carried out a brutal campsign of sexual degradation against women. He kept them as slaves before being sentenced for 23 years on Friday after being found guilty on six counts of indecent sexual assault and four counts of rape.

His daughter revealed herself after being given the legal right to anonymity in an effort to “retrieve the identity the cult tried to steal from me.” She explains: “I’ve been a non-person all my life and now is my chance to be myself.” Growing up, she was banned from going to school, there was no TV and she was not allowed to have acquaintances outside the commune. She was routinely mocked and beaten by her father, forced to sing songs eulogising him and was routinely degraded.

The woman, aged 33, was born into the cult and only found out that her mother was Sian Davies from Tregaron, Ceredigion, one of  the cult leader’s acolytes who died after she fell from a window on Christmas Eve, 1996. The woman only recently met her family from her mothers side after being kept a slave. She was saddened by the fact that she never got to know her grandmother who died not knowing of her existence.

The daughter of the leader was not the only one to suffer. The other victims, all women, described feeling like “a caged bird with clipped wings” in the commune.