The Irish woman allegedly held as a slave for 30 years by a sect in London is the daughter of a famous code-breaker, who played a key role in ensuring the Allied victory in World War II.

Josephine Herivel, 59, is the child of mathematician John Herivel, whose name was given to a groundbreaking method to crack codes which he invented at the height of the war in 1940.

British news channel, ITV, published footage of Ms. Herivel, which was filmed during a 1997 documentary, about the death of a woman who was a member of the far-left commune in which they lived.

The first picture has also emerged of Aravindan Balakrishnan, 73, the man accused of enslaving Ms. Herivel and two other women, in a south London house.

Balakrishnan was pictured at the 1997 inquest into the death of 44-year-old commune member Sian Davies, who died after falling from a bathroom window at the home the group - including Balakrishnan's wife - were sharing.

The three women were freed last month after Ms. Herivel made a call to the Freedom Charity, using a helpline number she has spotted on TV.

It's emerged that Herivel, who was brought up in Belfast and was a talented musician, joined the extremist sect in the 1970s, after she had moved over to London to study.

According to The Irish Independent, her Cambridge University-educated father "was responsible for coming up with an ingenious method to crack codes which became known as the Herivel Tip or herivelismus."

Herivel was prosecuted in 1978 after police in London raided the Maoist group's bookshop and headquarters in the British capital. The Irish Independent reports that her court appearance back then, alongside five fellow cult members, displayed the extent to which she had fallen under the spell of the sect - as she refused to recognise the court and denounced the judge as a "Fascist lackey."

Herivel was also with the sect when the aforementioned Sian Davies died in 1997, seven months after falling from a bathroom window.

At the subsequent inquest, the coroner was critical of the other women living there, after learning they had neglected to inform Davies' family of her accident, and instead lied to them by telling them she was on vacation in India.

Reporters who approached Herivel at the house to find out more information about what had taken place were snubbed and told they were parts of the "Fascist state."

It's also emerged that the Malaysian woman among the trio, who was identified earlier this week as Aishah Mautaum, vanished after moving to London on a scholarship and joining a Maoist sect.

The ITV footage also showed a woman, who it identified as Mautaum, waving reporters away from her home following Ms. Davies' death.

Since their release from the flat in Brixton in south London where they had been living for the past five years, the three women have been taken into the care of police and specially-trained charity workers.