A diabetic woman died after an alternative therapist persuaded her to stop taking insulin, a court has heard.
Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, looked for other treatments for her condition due to her fear of needles. She flew from her home in Lewes, East Sussex, heard about Hongchi Xiao and flew to see him in Bulgaria in July 2016.
Following that visit, she stopped taking her insulin, making her seriously unwell. She also started vomiting and she was hard to reason with – her loved ones had to beg her to start taking insulin again and she recovered.
But then in October that year, she went to a retreat hosted in Seend, Wiltshire, by Xiao, 61, who was described in the programme for the event as ‘Master Xiao’.
There he evangalised Paida Lajin therapy as a replacement for insulin, and Danielle described him as a ‘messenger sent by God’.
Prosecutor Duncan Atkinson said: ‘It is said to be a method of self-healing in which “poisonous waste” is expelled from the body through patting and slapping parts of the body.’
She stopped taking insulin and became ill again.
She died on the fourth day of the retreat after Xiao failed to call for help. Mr Atkinson said: ‘He knew that Mrs Carr-Gomm was risking death, and he knew that he had an influence over her decision.
‘In short, therefore he chose to congratulate a diabetic who stopped injecting, rather than to persuade them not to take so grievous a risk to their life.’
Danielle became increasingly unwell, and by the second day of the retreat she could be heard crying and yelling while laying in bed, was vomiting, tired and weak by the third day, and she was moved from her bed to a mattress on the floor because she fell out of bed.
Mr Atkinson said: ‘Those who had received and accepted the defendant’s teachings misinterpreted Mrs Carr-Gomm’s condition as a healing crisis.’
‘In that period of increasing danger, the medical evidence is that Mrs Carr-Gomm’s life could have been saved if medical aid was called.
‘By the time that such medical aid was finally called on day four, October 20, 2016, it was too late, and Danielle Carr-Gomm had died of diabetic ketoacidosis as a direct result of the decision to stop taking her insulin injections.
‘That decision was taken in the context of Mrs Carr-Gomm’s exposure to the evangelism, the confident belief, of this defendant that insulin was poison and that Paida Lajin represented an alternative, an alternative which she sought, to injecting insulin.
‘The defendant knew at first hand that it did not represent such an alternative, but rather it carried with it an obvious and serious risk of death.
‘He assumed a position of leadership and control over Mrs Carr-Gomm and her care as she declined and died, and he owed her a duty, which he failed to meet, to help and care for her.’
Mr Atkinson told the jury that Xiao had already been prosecuted for manslaughter after a six-year-old boy died in 2015.
The boy had stopped taking insulin after his parents took him to the ‘alternative therapy’.
Xiao does not have medical qualifications or training, Mr Atkinson added, and said he was an ‘exponent’ of Paida Lajin for 10 years and had written a book about it.
Xiao denies manslaughter, claiming he had no influence over the students at all and no more responsibility than anyone else at the retreat.
Charles Row KC, defending Xiao, told the jury that the defendant denied having a duty of care over Danielle who he had made ‘absolutely clear’ to that he was not medically trained. He also said Xiao told her not to suddenly stop taking her insulin.
The trial continues.
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