THE best training ground for journalists, we were told, is the courtroom. With tape recorders out of bounds, you’d have to listen carefully and get the facts right. Reporting from the courtroom gives you that discipline to jot down everything; listen attentively, and report just what was being said in the hushed courtroom and nothing more.
And, the other thing is, it trains one to be tough, to be hardened even, listening to gory details and reporting them back as is; no matter how revolting or how heartbreaking the evidence that was given.
My earliest training grounds were in the grand old colonial building in Penang — the birthplace of the country’s judiciary system I was told — situated along Light Street, facing the Esplanade.
Penang then had the most interesting cases for journo wannabes like me; especially drug smuggling cases where contraband items were smuggled in the most unexpected places, which would have challenged and threatened the livelihood of the legendary striptease artiste, Rose Chan.
There were murder cases, such as the Jelutong murder that nearly had me running out of the courtroom as the accused confessed to slashing his sons as one of them pleaded for his life.
Stories like this helped to give you the strength to move on to some other gorier stuff and, of course, ensured a front-page story and a hefty byline.
Fast forward a few more years to London where the city offered some very interesting cases too, when Malaysians fell on the wrong side of British law or when there were some Malaysian-related cases.
The football match-fixing case took me to the sleazier world of football where money talks in foreign tongues, while a murder case involving a young Malaysian prostitute, who was convicted with her Vietnamese boyfriend of beheading her rival while she was still alive, at the very least, educated me on parts of the anatomy being discussed at the Old Bailey.
Red chequered plastic laundry bags never looked the same to me again. Body parts of the young victim were found in one such bag, floating down the Thames.
Revolting as it may sound, these cases paled in comparison to two cases I had the misfortune to cover in recent years.
One was the case of the despicable Richard Huckle, the British paedophile who was slapped with 22 life sentences for sexually abusing vulnerable children in Malaysia. He looked so pathetic in the dock with hands clasping in a prayer-like manner.
It became unbearably nauseating for all those present in court, when he mitigated in a statement saying, “the youngest might not even have felt the pain!”
The repulsive statement resonated with Comrade Bala’s words and actions at the Southwark Crown Court, every time he was asked about the sexual abuse of one of the followers of his cult in South London in the 1970s.
I could never forget the snigger of defiance and arrogance on his crumpled face when he said, “What could I do? I couldn’t force her away!”, insinuating that the women were at fault, throwing themselves at him.
His followers included Aishah Wahab, now 72, who spoke in a BBC documentary recently about life in the commune for almost 40 years.
She had willingly left the house with the police in 2013, and since then the story unfolded, answering some, only some of the questions that were begging serious answers to.
It must be said that there was never any evidence nor anything that alluded to Aishah sharing the same fate as a Malaysian nurse whose evidence behind the screen helped put Bala where he is today.
Aishah did say in the hour-long documentary, The Cult Next Door, that she was slapped and hit when she incurred the wrath of the one who held hostage their minds.
Indeed, the nurse who until today remains anonymous, was first sexually abused, made to behave like his sex slave. His answers and passive attitude were his strong defence in court that he wasn’t the aggressor.
He would throw up his hands in court, give a chuckle and say, “What could I do!”
Indeed, what could they do! The followers were made to stand in a circle every evening to listen to his lectures and indoctrination. Any form of protestations would either be dealt with a slap or a threat that Jackie, the machine, would wreak havoc not only on their lives, but the world!
The Malaysian nurse testified, coming back tired from work, she could hardly stand on her feet. If she fell asleep standing up, she would receive a blow to the head. Once he hit her so hard that her hearing was damaged.
She was sexually abused in the most revolting manner that hushed the courtroom as we stared with disbelief at the impassive looking Bala in the dock. His wife, Chanda, too, had assumed a similar look of defiance as she listened daily to her husband’s ridiculous rants about the machine and his sexual exploit that resulted in the birth of Katy.
However, now my mind raced back to one other victim, Nurse Oh, who came from Penang to study nursing in the 1960s.
It was reported that she had died of brain haemorrhage. Her death followed that of the death of another follower, Sian Davies, Bala’s lover.
According to police reports, Oh hit her head on a cupboard and died from massive internal bleeding.
Friends were concerned about Oh’s wellbeing, but were left none the wiser until the police’s discovery of a jar containing Oh’s ashes in a storage where Bala kept his stuff.
I am happy to learn that Oh’s siblings had come to London to take her ashes so that she could be given a proper place to rest. She and Aishah had been reunited with their siblings, family relationships that Bala had severed for so many years.
The nurse, although testifying behind a screen, had had her say. Aishah, too, had done so in the documentary. But not Oh.
I am now reminded of a poem someone wrote after listening to the case at Southwark Crown Court. Here are excerpts of the poignant thoughts of perhaps a friend who cared:
Ode to Nurse Oh
I sit on a shelf in Access Storage
Reduced to ashes in a jar
Someone left me there in a jar,
So cruelly
So callously
Carelessly forgotten
I yearn for home
If I could reach out
If someone would open the jar
Perhaps the wind will carry me home
Far across the continent and seas
Home to Malaysia where I was born
Home to rest where my father lies in rest
I am ashes
Even ashes can dream of home.
- Ming
Nurse Oh, you are now at home!