An alternative medicine practitioner who did little as their client died is now going away for a long time. Over the weekend, Hongchi Xiao was sentenced to 10 years in prison by a UK judge for the negligent manslaughter of 71-year-old Danielle Carr-Gomm. Carr-Gomm died several days after she had stopped taking her insulin during one of Xiao’s workshops, where he promoted something known as “slapping therapy.”
A UK jury found the 61-year-old Xiao guilty of manslaughter by gross negligence earlier this July for his role in Carr-Gomm’s death. Xiao reportedly did little to help Carr-Gomm as her condition worsened, at one point telling his other followers that she was experiencing a “healing crisis.” Remarkably, Carr-Gomm is the second person to have died from not taking insulin while under Xiao’s supervision—a critical detail in the argument for this latest conviction.
A California resident born in China, Xiao was the inventor of what he dubbed Paida lajin therapy. A main tenet of the therapy is that people can clear “poisonous waste” from their bodies by slapping themselves while assuming certain positions, often to the point of a person’s skin becoming bruised. Xiao and his adherents (who called him “master”) have argued that this slapping can treat a wide range of ailments, including infections, Alzheimer’s disease, and autism—claims that other medical experts have dismissed as completely unfounded and unsupported by any evidence.
According to prosecutors, Carr-Gomm was first diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1999 and had become desperate to avoid using needle injections of insulin for her condition. During an earlier workshop of Xiao’s in Bulgaria, she reportedly stopped taking her medication and became sick to the point that she started taking insulin again. But that experience didn’t stop her from praising Xiao in a video testimonial as a “messenger sent by God,” nor did it seem to worry Xiao much. At the start of the fateful retreat in October 2016, held in England, Xiao reportedly congratulated Carr-Gomm when she announced her cessation of insulin to other members. As she became increasingly sick, eventually vomiting and frothing at the mouth, Xiao reportedly only made a “token effort” to get her medical help, prosecutors said.
“You knew from late in the afternoon of day one of the fact that Danielle Carr-Gomm had stopped taking her insulin,” said Justice Robert Bright during Xiao’s sentencing at Winchester Crown Court, according to the AP. “Furthermore, you made it clear to her you supported this.”
Xiao had to be extradited from Australia for the trial, where he had earlier been successfully convicted of manslaughter for the death of a 6-year-old boy under similar circumstances. The boy’s parents had stopped providing him insulin while attending one of Xiao’s workshops in Sydney in April 2015. Unlike this recent case, the Australian court determined that Xiao had directly instructed the boy’s mother not to give him insulin, even as his health worsened.
“While we cannot bring our mother back, we hope this case at least highlights the dangers of pursuing unregulated alternative therapies without proper research,” said Carr-Gomm’s family in response to the sentencing.
Xiao’s total sentence in the UK will be for 15 years, 10 of which is set to be behind bars.
