An alternative healer accused of the manslaughter of a woman with diabetes who died after she stopped taking insulin at his slapping therapy retreat should have learned a “cruel lesson” from the death of a six-year-old boy who lost his life after a previous workshop, a jury 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, 71, from Lewes, East Sussex.
Carr-Gomm died at Cleeve House, Wiltshire, where she was taking part in the event promoting paida lajin therapy, which involves patients being slapped or slapping themselves repeatedly.
Xiao was previously convicted in an Australian court of the manslaughter of a six-year-old boy with diabetes who died after Xiao told his parents to stop giving him his insulin after attending a workshop he ran.
The jury has heard that though Xiao is not accused of instructing Carr-Gomm to stop taking her insulin, he congratulated her when she informed him she had stopped her medication.
Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, told the jury the boy’s family had attended one of Xiao’s paida lajin workshops in Hurstville, Sydney, which involved participants slapping themselves and each other, and fasting, in April 2015.
He said: “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.”
Atkinson said that by day three, the boy’s mother had told the workshop group that her son’s health was deteriorating, and that he was “vomiting, had high blood sugar levels and high ketone levels”.
Despite this, Xiao continued to “instruct” the mother to not give the insulin to her son, the court heard, and his health continued to worsen.
By the fifth day he was required to be pushed in a pram because he could not walk or stand to dress himself, and he started to “vomit yellow and black liquid”, the court heard.
The mother confronted Xiao but he replied: “Is the detox. All the bad stuff … come out from his body, his organ. It’s just part of self-healing body adjustment.”
Four days later, the boy had a seizure. Atkinson said that Xiao 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.
Atkinson told the jury: “The defendant was ultimately prosecuted for and convicted of manslaughter. He advocated a course that he knew was not medically justified and was contrary to medical experience, and a boy died as a result.”
Carr-Gomm died 18 months later, in October 2016. Atkinson said: “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.”
Paul McNally, a senior NHS consultant, told jurors that Carr-Gomm could have been saved if paramedics were called a few hours earlier.
Paramedics were called at 2.54am on 20 October 2016. “She was undoubtedly desperately ill,” McNally said. “If treated on Wednesday, up until late on Wednesday, in my view treatment and outcome would have been successful and avoided her death.”
Xiao denies the charge and the trial continues.
