An alternative Chinese healer convicted of the manslaughter of a diabetic grandmother is already serving time for killing a six-year-old boy in Australia, it can now be reported.
Today, Hongchi Xiao, 61, of Cloudbreak in California, was found guilty of killing Danielle Carr-Gomm at a slapping therapy workshop in Wiltshire in 2016.
Xiao congratulated Ms Carr-Gomm, a Type 1 diabetic, when she stopped taking her insulin before she died from ketoacidosis.
The workshop promoted a treatment known as ‘paida lajin’ – in which people slap themselves and each other to expel poisons from the body.
But, following his guilty verdict, it can now be reported that 18 months before Ms Carr-Gomm’s death, Xiao was also involved in the death of a diabetic child Aidan Fenton in Sydney.
Aidan Fenton, pictured with mother Lily and father Geoff, before he died at one of Xiao’s slap therapy workshops
Hongchi Xiao ‘congratulated’ Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, when she stopped taking insulin at his four-day retreat
Mrs Carr-Gomm, a follower of Xiao’s who wanted to get rid of her type 1 diabetes, fell gravely ill over the course of the October 2016 workshop
Many medical practitioners have criticised the practice, saying that it causes bruises and results in broken blood vessels leading to horrific injuries such as those pictured above
Seven-year-old Aidan died after Xiao told his parents to stop giving him insulin after attending a £990 slap therapy workshop in Hurstville, New South Wales in April 2015.
The court heard how, shortly after the start of the workshop Xiao told Aidan’s parents Lily and Geoff ‘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,’ Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, told the jury.
But by day three, the youngster started to become seriously ill and started ‘vomiting black liquid’, which Xiao put down ‘to just part of self-healing body adjustment’.
Despite this, Xiao continued to ‘instruct’ Mrs Fenton to continue withholding her son’s insulin, and his health continued to deteriorate.
Aidan Fenton with his mother Lily before his death in April 2015
Aidan could not be revived after falling unconscious in the Ritz Hotel in Hurstville, Sydney
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.
Mrs Fenton confronted Xiao and told him: ‘Look at this picture, last night he vomiting black stuff, all these things’.
Xiao 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, the same condition as Ms Carr-Gomm.
Mr Atkinson told the jury: ‘The defendant was ultimately prosecuted for and convicted of (the boy)’s 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.
Hongchi Xiao, during a visit to South Africa, sits cross-legged as he gives an interview about the merits of paida lajin
The boy died at a £990 slap therapy retreat held at the Ritz Hotel in Hurstville, Sydney, in 2015
Court sketch of Xiao at Winchester Crown Court during the latest court case against him
A significant purple bruise, appearing as though made with the palm of a hand, appears on a paida lajin participant’s tummy
Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, who had diabetes, ended up dead from the consequences of Xaio’s unorthodox methods
A person covered in red marks across the backs of their legs after taking part in paida lajin
‘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.’
He was pronounced dead five days later at Sydney’s St George Hospital.
Xiao was found guilty of the manslaughter of Aidan in October 2015. His parents and grandmother were also charged with manslaughter in 2017, but found not guilty.
In December 2019, Xiao was sentenced to at least seven years and six months in prison for manslaughter.
A New South Wales District Court judge said his parents were clearly led to believe their son would be cured of diabetes through participating in the workshop.
When Xiao was found guilty of Aidan’s death in 2019, he listened to the heartbreaking victim impact statement of the agony his parents had endured.
‘He was becoming my best friend,’ Mr Fenton told a court in Sydney.
Meanwhile, Mrs Fenton revealed her ‘immense pain, as if someone stabbed me in my heart.’
The alternative healer showed no remorse for his role in Aidan’s death, later telling his YouTube followers that it was ‘purely an accident’ and the boy had ‘many diseases’.
