UPDATED WITH SENTENCE: Self-healing practitioner jailed for gross negligence manslaughter after death of diabetic woman

A man convicted of gross negligence manslaughter following the death of a 71-year-old diabetic woman at a ‘slapping therapy’ workshop has been jailed. 

Hongchi Xiao, 61, from California, USA, had promoted the practice as a ‘cure’ for diabetes at the workshop in Seend, Wiltshire in 2016.

Danielle Carr-Gomm, who had Type 1 diabetes, died on 20 October, 2016 from diabetic ketoacidosis after she stopped taking her insulin at the event.

Xiao led the workshop and assured Mrs Carr-Gomm that her condition could be healed by a method of self-healing known as Paida Lajin, which is said to expel ‘poisonous waste’ from the body through slapping and stretching.

Mrs Carr-Gomm was congratulated by Xiao when she announced on the first day of the workshop that she had stopped taking her insulin.

But she became very unwell after she stopped her injections and Xiao neither told her to start taking her insulin or sought any medical assistance despite assuming a position of leadership over her care.

Her death was as a direct result of not taking her insulin injections at the slapping therapy workshop.

On 6 December at Winchester Crown Court, Xiao was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, with a five-year extended licence period. 

Rosemary Ainslie, Head of the CPS Special Crime Division, said: “Hongchi Xiao knew the consequences of Danielle Carr-Gomm’s decision to stop taking insulin could be fatal - he had seen it before.

“The prosecution successfully applied for bad character evidence to be made admissible, so that members of the jury could hear about Xiao’s previous conviction in Australia which arose from strikingly similar circumstances and followed the death of a child also deprived of insulin.

“Xiao openly criticised the use of insulin and congratulated Mrs Carr-Gomm on her decision to stop using it at the workshop she was attending in Wiltshire.

“Once she became extremely unwell, as a result of not taking her medication, he took no action to seek medical assistance or persuade her to take her insulin.

“Hongchi Xiao was the man in charge, yet he failed to respond to Mrs Carr-Gomm’s worsening condition with tragic consequences . His failure to take reasonable steps to help Mrs Carr-Gomm substantially contributed to her death and amounted to gross negligence.

“The CPS will always seek to deliver justice and our thoughts remain with the family of Mrs Carr-Gomm at this time.”

Building the case; Gross negligence manslaughter

The offence of gross negligence manslaughter is committed where the death is a result of a grossly negligent act or omission on the part of the defendant.

In order to prove the offence, the prosecution must therefore establish the following elements:

•    The defendant owed a duty of care to the deceased;
•    The defendant was in breach of the duty which he owed to the deceased;
•    The breach of duty was a cause of the death; and
•    The causative breach of duty amounts to gross negligence manslaughter and is therefore a crime.

In this case, prosecutors looked at three key areas:

1.    Knowledge – Xiao knew that Mrs Carr-Gomm was a Type 1 diabetic and that she was relying on Paida Lajin having claimed to have reduced her insulin intake by 50 per cent.
2.    Previous experience – Xiao’s previous experience with Mrs Carr-Gomm at a workshop in Bulgaria demonstrated that she would become seriously ill very quickly without insulin and that beginning her injections again would reverse that decline. Xiao also knew that Mrs Carr-Gomm would listen to his advice to start taking insulin again.
3.    Death of Aidan – Xiao knew of the fatal consequences of the failure to take insulin in the case of another boy who died the year before. That incident is clear evidence of knowledge of an obvious risk of death from a failure to take insulin.

Mrs Carr-Gomm first met Xiao at a Paida Lajin workshop in Bulgaria in July 2016 as she sought an alternative to insulin injections which she disliked.

At that workshop, Mrs Carr-Gomm also stopped her insulin injections but was persuaded to start taking her medication again after she became extremely unwell.

During the trial, prosecutors argued that Xiao was well aware of the impact on Mrs Carr-Gomm of not taking her insulin due to the workshop in Bulgaria, and that he had a strong influence over her regarding decisions over her medication.

Jurors also heard how Xiao had led a similar workshop in Hurstville, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, in April 2015.

At that seminar, he described Paida Lajin as 100 per cent effective against Type 1 Diabetes, and that its healing effects meant it was no longer necessary to take insulin as it would be generated naturally.

Among those attending were the parents of a six-year-old boy called Aidan. At the workshop, Aidan’s parents stopped giving him insulin and he became extremely unwell, with symptoms of diabetic ketoacidosis.

Xiao told the parents that it was part of the ‘self-healing body adjustment’, but Aidan died as a direct consequence of not receiving his insulin.

Following Aidan’s death, Xiao was prosecuted for manslaughter in Australia and was convicted. The judge at that trial found that Xiao had given instructions to Aiden’s mother to stop injecting him with insulin, and that he had repeated this instruction a number of times during the workshop.

The CPS’s Extradition Unit was instrumental in Xiao being convicted both in England and Australia.

Initially, they represented Australia in the English extradition court process, which resulted in Xiao’s return to Australia, for prosecution. 

He was then successfully extradited back to England in 2023 following further work between the CPS’s Extradition Unit and its Australian counterparts, so that he could be successfully prosecuted for the manslaughter of Mrs Carr-Gomm by the CPS Special Crime Division..