Two patients — a 71-year-old woman and 6-year-old boy — have died in connection with a slap therapy workshop that promised to remove “poisonous waste” from the body.
An alternative healer, Hongchi Xiao, 61, was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence in a London court on Dec. 6 after failing to get medical help for a client who went into diabetic shock during a week-long workshop, the Associated Press reports. Xiao was sentenced to ten years in prison.
Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, was a diabetic who stopped taking her insulin during one of Xiao’s workshops in 2016 — which calls for clients slap themselves to remove “poisonous waste” from their bodies.
Known as Paida Lajin, the practice involves slapping the skin and stretching, The Independent explains, adding that often participants are left bruised and marked from the sessions.
Xiao told Carr-Gomm, “well done,” when she said she’d stopped taking her insulin during the week-long workshop, the BBC reported. Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson KC said that, by the third day, “she was vomiting, tired and weak, and by the evening she was howling in pain and unable to respond to questions.”
Carr-Gomm is the second person to die in connection to Xiao’s workshops. A six-year-old boy in Australia died in 2015 after his parents stopped giving him insulin following one of Xiao’s workshops, the AP reports.
Xiao instructed the boy’s mother to stop giving him his injections, The Guardian reports, leading to Xiao being convicted of manslaughter in Sydney.
He was brought to the UK to face charges in Carr-Gomm’s death.
At his sentencing, the BBC reports Justice Bright informed Xiao: “You congratulated [Carr-Gomm] when you found out she had stopped taking insulin. You failed to summon emergency medical care when you of all people knew she was likely to die without insulin. I believe you will continue to practice it. There is a risk you will actively or tacitly encourage followers to reduce their medication. Letters from your supporters and the undiminished belief they and you have in Paida Lajin make me apprehensive.”
“I’m concerned history may repeat itself and this presents a risk to the public. In this specific regard I consider you dangerous.”
The Guardian reports that Xiao is comparing himself to a political prisoner, saying, the practice of slap therapy “is totally beyond the imagination of the media and the experts.” (People)