Second manslaughter conviction for healer after six-year-old diabetic boy dies

Alternative healer Hongchi Xiao was previously prosecuted over the death of a six-year-old diabetic boy in Australia after he instructed the youngster’s parents to stop giving him his insulin medication, his trial was told.

Xiao’s trial for the manslaughter of Danielle Carr-Gomm, who died in Wiltshire in October 2016, heard that he was convicted of manslaughter by an Australian court in that case.

Winchester Crown Court heard that Xiao told the boy’s parents to stop giving the life-saving medication to him.

However, the trial was told there was no evidence that the defendant gave a similar instruction to Mrs Carr-Gomm, although it was claimed he said “well done” to her after the 71-year-old informed him that she had stopped her medication.

Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, told the jury that the boy’s family had attended Xiao’s workshops on Paida Lajin, a self-healing therapy, in Hurstville, Sydney, which involved participants slapping themselves and each other, and fasting.

He said: “The defendant himself did not perform any slapping on any of the participants.

“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.”

Mr Atkinson said that, by day three, the boy’s mother told the workshop group of her son’s deteriorating health and said he was “vomiting, had high blood sugar levels and high ketone levels”.

Despite this, the court was told, Xiao continued to “instruct” the mother to not give insulin to her son and his health deteriorated further. On the fifth day he needed 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 that the mother confronted Xiao and told him: “Look this picture, last night he vomiting black stuff, all these things”, to which he 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 in his room with his grandmother when he began vomiting black liquid and had a seizure.

As the grandmother went for help, she locked herself out of the room, and when hotel staff arrived they found the boy motionless on the bed, the court heard.

Mr Atkinson said Xiao also went to the room 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.

“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.

“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.”

Xiao had denied having a duty of care over Mrs Carr-Gomm or that he had breached any duty of care.