Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, died at Cleeve House in Seend, Wiltshire, where she was taking part in a workshop to help her diabetes. Photo / Wiltshire Police
Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, died at Cleeve House in Seend, Wiltshire, where she was taking part in a workshop to help her diabetes. Photo / Wiltshire Police
An alternative healer who thought Western medicine was evil killed a diabetic grandmother at a “slap therapy workshop” after encouraging her to stop taking insulin, a court has heard.
Hongchi Xiao allegedly congratulated Danielle Carr-Gomm when she stopped taking the drug at his four-day retreat where he performed paida lajin, a Chinese holistic therapy that involves slapping patients.
Carr-Gomm, 71, a follower of Xiao’s who wanted to get rid of her Type 1 diabetes, fell gravely ill over the course of the 2016 workshop and on day four of the retreat she died of diabetic ketoacidosis.
On Monday jurors heard Xiao, 61, ignored medical evidence that diabetics need lifesaving insulin and evangelised his slap therapy course as a cure.
Xiao, who is accused of manslaughter, is said to have refused to call for urgent medical intervention and led patients to think that Carr-Gomm’s worsening condition was a “healing crisis”.
Prosecutors said he had entrenched views that medicines such as insulin were poison and believed in the “curative powers of paida lajin”.
Paida lajin means “slap and stretch” in Chinese and involves practitioners slapping patients all over their body to apparently expel poisonous waste.
Xiao was previously convicted of manslaughter in Australia after a 6-year-old boy with Type 1 diabetes stopped taking insulin under his instruction and died during a workshop about 17 months before Carr-Gomm’s death.
Xiao of Cloudbreak, California, appeared on Monday at Winchester Crown Court, Hampshire, for the first day of his three-week trial. He denies manslaughter.
Carr-Gomm died at Xiao’s four-day paida lajin course at Cleeve House in Melksham, Wiltshire, in October 2016.
Xiao, who has no medical qualifications or training, said the therapy could lead to full recovery in 90 per cent of cases including people with diabetes.
Alternative healer Hongchi Xiao. Photo / YouTube
Told about the risk
In March 2015, Xiao held a workshop in India with the Diabetes Research Centre and a report was given to him, telling him about the risk of death for Type 1 diabetics who stop taking insulin.
A month later, in Australia, the 6-year-old boy’s parents took their son to Xiao’s workshop to try to cure his condition.
Xiao was found by an Australian court to have told the boy’s parents to stop giving him insulin and when he was dying before them, Xiao said he was simply detoxing.
Carr-Gomm of Lewes, East Sussex, first attended one of Xiao’s workshops in Bulgaria in July 2016.
She was an “obsessive vegetarian” who had a fear of needles, so did not like injecting insulin and as a result tried every kind of alternative therapy, the court heard.
At the Bulgarian workshop, Xiao assured Carr-Gomm he could help her with her diabetes and she stopped taking insulin. However, she was eventually given it when she became extremely unwell.
Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, said Xiao had an “important influence” over Carr-Gomm and owed her a duty of care at the Wiltshire workshop in October 2016 as he knew the seriousness of not taking insulin.
Atkinson said Xiao would have known there was an obvious and serious risk of death.
Atkinson also said Xiao’s “failure to take reasonable steps in those circumstances substantially contributed to Carr-Gomm’s death and amounted to gross negligence”.
‘Crying and yelling’
Atkinson said that after Carr-Gomm stopped taking her insulin she “exhibited clear signs of being increasingly and seriously unwell”.
On the second day of the workshop, Carr-Gomm was heard “crying and yelling” while lying on her bed.
A day later she was vomiting and by the evening she was “howling in pain and was unable to respond to questions”.
Atkinson said: “[Xiao] had, but did not take, repeated opportunities to call for medical assistance.
“Both his experience with [the 6-year-old boy] and with Carr-Gomm in Bulgaria would have made abundantly clear to him that her life was increasingly in danger.
“The medical evidence is that Carr-Gomm’s life could have been saved if medical aid was called.”
By the time medical assistance was sought the next day it was too late. Carr-Gomm had died of diabetic ketoacidosis as a “direct result of the decision to stop taking insulin”, Atkinson said.
