The video shows a healer accused of murder performing whipping therapy

Written by Matt Strudwick and Frankie Elliott

19:58 03 Jul 2024, updated 20:05 03 Jul 2024

A photo released today shows a doctor accused of murder who administered slapping therapy at a so-called cure-all seminar.

Hongchi Xiao, 61, is on trial at Winchester Crown Court charged with the aggravated manslaughter of Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, of Lewes, East Sussex, who died after stopping to take her insulin on a course treatment home.

Mrs Carr-Gomm died at Cleeve House in Seend, Wiltshire, where she was taking part in an event in October 2016 promoting the Paida Lajin treatment, which sees patients being repeatedly beaten or beaten.

The video – which was shown to the jury – shows Xiao forcefully punching the Indian man’s elbow for about a minute and causing him to suffer a heart attack.

The trial heard that Xiao was previously convicted in an Australian court for the manslaughter of a six-year-old boy who died after his parents stopped giving him his insulin after attending his training.

Jurors sitting in his three-week trial were shown footage of his Indian seminar in March 2015.

‘The big question is this: what is death?’, Xiao begins.

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According to Chinese medicine, all diseases, despite their different names, are caused by the same thing – it is the blocking of the meridian.

So if you want to cure this disease, you do only one simple thing – to unlock the blockages. That is healing. Meridians are the pathways along which energy travels.’

He goes on to say that the benefits of slap therapy are that it can cure diseases including diabetes.

Xiao said that he treated his mother with a Western doctor and that he stopped taking the medicine he strongly believed in.

He also claims to have cured many others who have relied on Western medicine over the years.

He said: ‘Even if you are a king or a queen or a billionaire, even if everything is free, you have very good medical insurance, do you like to use insulin or drugs every day?

‘No, even if it is free, because they are poisonous.’

At one point, he invites the seminary to try to heal themselves by doing paida lajin, which involves patients who repeatedly beat themselves.

‘Can I ask you to try, let’s say four or five minutes, try to hit the inside of your elbow?’, Xiao says.

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He can then be seen instructing the crowd to clap their hands ‘to see what happens.’

He tells them: ‘If you feel pain, good news, that means you have a problem.

‘The more the pain, the more you have to do it. If it doesn’t hurt, don’t do it, it means you’re healthy.’

Xiao says that if participants feel pain and see a dark area growing when they pinch themselves, it means they have heart disease.

He says the heart meridian channel is inside the elbow.

He brings someone to the stage, gives him a handshake, and checks him for heart problems.

He says you can’t believe it when the doctors say you don’t have a heart attack.

‘That kind of report usually doesn’t come from the doctor, it comes from the machine.

‘Even the doctors look at the machine.

‘You have two options; one, you believe in the machine, if the machine tells you to do it, if you don’t, you don’t.

Second, you have another option. That is your body. This is the most advanced and dedicated machine you own.

You can trust your body. You think your body can play tricks on you?’

The court heard that Xiao told the boy’s parents to stop giving him life-saving medication and although it is not suggested that the accused gave the same order to Mrs Carr-Gomm, the prosecution said the accused “thank you” Ms Carr-Gomm. after he informed her that he had stopped his medication.

The teenager became very ill and started ‘vomiting black liquid’, which Xiao put down as “just part of the body’s healing process”, and the boy died in April 2015, 18 months before to Mrs. Carr-Gomm.

Duncan Atkinson KC, prosecuting, told the court that the family had attended Xiao’s Paida Lajin workshops in Hurstville, Sydney, which involved participants doing handstands and fasting.

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He said: ‘The defendant himself did not hit any of the participants.

Shortly after the course began, as the judge dealing with him in Australia found, the defendant told (the boy) to stop (his) insulin injections.

‘Such an order is clear evidence of how strongly held the defendant’s views were, for example, about insulin being poison.’

Mr Atkinson said on the third day the boy’s mother told the training team about her son’s worsening condition and that he was vomiting, had high blood sugar and high in ketones.

However, Xiao continued to ‘order’ his mother to continue not giving her son insulin, the court heard, and his health continued to deteriorate.

On the fifth day she had to be pushed in a pram because she could not walk or stand up to dress herself and started vomiting yellow and black liquid’, the court heard.

The court was told that the mother confronted Xiao and told him: ‘Look at this picture, last night he vomited black stuff, all this stuff’, to which he replied: ‘I’m detox. All the bad things come out – they come out of his body, his organ. It’s just part of the healing process.’

Four days later, the boy was accompanied by his grandmother to her room when he started vomiting black liquid and had a seizure.

When the grandmother went to get help, she locked herself in the room and hotel staff arrived to find the boy motionless in bed, the court heard.

Mr Atkinson said Xiao also returned and began ‘kicking the boy’s inner elbows’ until paramedics arrived, but they were unable to revive him and he died due to diabetic ketoacidosis.

Mr Atkinson told the court: ‘Ultimately the defendant was charged and found guilty of (the boy’s) murder.

It follows that there can be no question but that the accused owed (the boy) a duty of care while he was attending his training, and that he breached that duty.

He refused and forbade the use of conventional medicine even when he knew that doing so could have very serious and life-threatening consequences.

‘He advocated a study that he knew was medically unjustified and contrary to medical experience, and the boy died as a result.

‘His actions towards Danielle Carr-Gomm occurred when a real, obvious and serious risk of death became even more real.

‘They included the same behavior, cheering for a Type 1 diabetic who replaced insulin with Paida Lajin, and didn’t take action to get help despite education cruel that should have been given by the boy’s sudden death.’

Xiao denies the charge and the trial is ongoing.