Manslaughter accused ‘learned slapping therapy from kung fu masters’

An alternative healer accused of the manslaughter of a British woman with diabetes who died at his slapping therapy workshop has told a jury that he learned his method from kung fu masters and hermits in China.

Hongchi Xiao said paida lajin therapy could combat all diseases including diabetes, but he also insisted he would never tell a person with type 1 diabetes to stop taking insulin.

Winchester crown court heard that Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, from East Sussex, died after she stopped taking her insulin during a workshop run by Xiao at a country house in Wiltshire.

The prosecution has claimed Xiao, 61, congratulated her decision and failed to get help for her when she fell gravely ill, even though a six-year-old boy with type 1 diabetes had died after stopping taking insulin at a workshop he had run in Australia 18 months before.

Xiao, giving evidence with the help of a Mandarin interpreter, told the court: “I’m not a medical doctor. Everyone is responsible for their own medication.”

He accepted he had expressed concerns about the “corruption” of western drug companies and the side-effects of medication, including insulin. “I’m not fully against medicine – what I’m concerned about is the side-effects,” he said.

The defendant confirmed he had written that taking insulin damaged the liver and eyes. But when asked by his barrister, Charles Row KC “if someone needed insulin would you persuade them not to take it?”, he replied: “Never.”

Xiao told the jury he was born in China, the son of a “western medical doctor” and an electrical engineer. He said he studied finance in Beijing and the US and worked in banking in New York and Hong Kong.

At the age of about 40 he decided he wanted to do something more meaningful than making money. He said his older brother had had mental health problems from the side-effects of medical drugs and his father had died soon after undergoing chemotherapy.

Xiao said he began travelling, learning acupuncture and acupressure. He based himself at a monastery in Tibet and people would travel “hundreds of miles” for treatment.

But he said this was not enough. He wanted to find a method that more people could use to tackle the “jaw-dropping” cost of conventional medicine. “There must be a way or method that every individual can treat themselves,” he said.

It had to be simple. “If it’s too complicated, they won’t learn it,” he said.

He told the court he found it “very hard” to find a teacher and travelled for five, six or seven years to the “faraway mountains” and spoke to kung fu masters as well as hermits, farmers, fishers.

A monk told him about paida lajin, a combination of slapping and stretching. Xiao said that when he asked why the method was not more widespread, he was told: “It’s not because we want to keep it a secret.” The monk explained that it was because people didn’t believe the method worked and even laughed at it.

The defendant told the jury that paida lajin helped unblock “meridians”, channels in the body through which energy moves. He said diseases were caused by blockages in the meridians. Paida lajin cleared the blockages, “automatically” bringing about healing.

He began to teach it to other people. At first it was used to help headaches and back pain and “gradually all kinds of diseases”. He said successes included a woman who had not been able to walk getting up. It gradually spread from “poor” places in China, Indonesia and India to “developed countries” including the US, UK and Australia, he said.

The trial has heard that Carr-Gomm had sought alternatives to her insulin medication because of her vegetarianism and fear of needles.

Xiao denies gross negligence manslaughter. The trial continues.