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An alternative “healer” accused of the manslaughter of a 71-year-old diabetic woman who died after stopping taking her insulin at his slapping therapy workshop was previously prosecuted for the death of a six-year-old boy, a court has heard.
Hongchi Xiao, 61, of Cloudbreak, California, is on trial at Winchester Crown Court accused of the manslaughter by gross negligence of Danielle Carr-Gomm, from Lewes, East Sussex.
Carr-Gomm died at Cleeve House in Seend, Wiltshire, where she was taking part in the event in October 2016 which promoted Paida Lajin therapy, which sees patients being slapped or slapping themselves repeatedly.
The trial heard that Xiao was previously convicted in an Australian court for the manslaughter of the six-year-old boy who died after his parents stopped giving him his insulin after attending his workshops.
The court heard that Xiao told the boy’s parents to stop giving the life-saving medication to him and although it is not suggested the defendant gave a similar instruction to Carr-Gomm, the prosecution claims the defendant “congratulated” Carr-Gomm after she informed him she had stopped her medication.
The youngster started to become seriously ill and started “vomiting black liquid”, which Xiao put down “to just part of self-healing body adjustment”, and the boy then died in April 2015, 18 months before Carr-Gomm.
Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, told the jury the family attended Xiao’s Paida Lajin workshops in Hurstville, Sydney, which involved the participants slapping themselves and each other, and fasting.
He said: “The defendant himself did not perform any slapping on any of the participants.
“Shortly after the start of the workshop, as the judge who dealt with him in Australia found, the defendant told [the boy’s] mother to stop [his] insulin injections.
“Such an instruction is clear evidence of how strongly held the defendant’s views were, for example, as to insulin being poison.”
Mr Atkinson said that by day three the boy’s mother told the workshop group of her son’s deteriorating health and that he was “vomiting, had high blood sugar levels and high ketone levels”.
Despite this, Xiao continued to “instruct” the mother to continue not giving the insulin to her son, the court heard, and his health continued to deteriorate.
By the fifth day he was required to be pushed in a pram because he could not walk or stand to dress himself and started to “vomit yellow and black liquid”, the court heard.
The court was told the mother confronted Xiao and told him: “Look at this picture, last night he vomiting black stuff, all these things,” to which he replied: “Is the detox. All the bad stuff come from – come out from his body, his organ. It’s just part of self-healing body adjustment.”
Four days later, the boy was accompanied by his grandmother in his room when he began vomiting black liquid and had a seizure.
As the grandmother went for help, she locked herself out of the room and hotel staff arrived who found the boy on the bed motionless, the court heard.
Mr Atkinson said that Xiao also returned and began “slapping the boy’s inner elbows” until paramedics arrived, but they were unable to resuscitate him and he died as a result of diabetic ketoacidosis.
Mr Atkinson told the jury: “The defendant was ultimately prosecuted for and convicted of [the boy] manslaughter.
“It follows that there can be no question but that the defendant owed [the boy] a duty of care whilst he was an attendee at his workshop, and that he breached that duty.
“He deprecated and deterred the use of conventional medicine even when he knew that to do so risked very serious consequences which could in turn be life-threatening.
“He advocated a course that he knew was not medically justified and was contrary to medical experience, and a boy died as a result.
“His actions towards Danielle Carr-Gomm occurred when the very real, obvious and serious risk of death had become all the more real and all the more obvious.
“They involved similar conduct, congratulating a type 1 diabetic who replaced insulin with Paida Lajin, and taking no action to secure her help despite the cruel lesson that ought to have been provided by the boy’s untimely death.”
Xiao denies the charge and the trial continues.
