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Inquiry as sex blackmail case victim named

Austin Chiu

Police are investigating whether online forums including Facebook have breached a court order banning the identification of a member of a religious group blackmailed over gay-sex acts.

The Sunday Morning Post put questions to the Department of Justice and the police following the discovery of a Facebook page that names and displays a photograph of the blackmail victim and threads from some Chinese discussion forums. Police opened an inquiry on Friday. The 76-year-old blackmail victim was identified only as X in court.

Two weeks ago Cheung Ka-wo, a 28-year-old Chinese University economics student, was convicted of conspiracy to blackmail for scheming with Li Dora Kay to extort more than HK$6 million from X and his supervisor, identified only as Y, after they had filmed X performing sex acts with Cheung.

Cheung is being held at the Siu Lam Psychiatric Centre. He was transferred there after being diagnosed as having suicidal thoughts following his conviction.

The court order - to prevent X's name, occupation and the name of his religious group from being reported - was imposed to avoid causing embarrassment to blackmail victims and to encourage victims to come forward. But it did not deter curious members of the online community from sniffing out the background details of X.

The names of Cheung and X have since been searched on the internet frequently and some sites have revealed details of the case.

The exposure of the victims' identity came after the Law Society indicated that the gag order could be subject to a judicial review, raising questions as to whether the court had gone too far.

Most significant of all is a Facebook page whose title includes the name of the school Cheung and X worked at. It also names X and his post at the religious group. It had attracted 826 members as of yesterday.

The front page of the site, which was created in November - a month before a court order was imposed - has a picture of X emblazoned on it. There is also background information on X and a compilation of news articles related to the blackmail case. Some comments lambast X for his 'disgraceful' acts.

All the administrators of the site had left the group by last week. A member last posted a link to a photograph of X to a thread on the page on Monday.

Stephen Hung Wan-shun, the chairman of the Law Society's criminal law committee, said the page creator and those who read it and further distribute the information would be in contempt of court.

As the page was first set up before the gagging order was imposed in December, Hung said it could be grounds for a defence that the creator or the administrator was ignorant about the order.

'The prosecution has to prove [that] the Facebook user knew about the gag order. If he was aware of it and intentionally disclosed the information that leads to identifying of the victims, he would be convicted of contempt of court,' he said.

Hung said it did not matter whether the content of the page was open to the public or only available to friends of the creator. 'Distributing the information by any means would be in breach of the order,' he said.

Facebook, which acts as a media platform, would be spared from prosecution. Hung said that although data of the webpage would have been stored in a server overseas, as long as the prosecution could locate the creator a Hong Kong court would have the jurisdiction to handle the case.

The Department of Justice, which is responsible for prosecuting people breaching the order, said the matter had been referred to the police for investigation but did not reply to questions. Facebook did not reply to Post inquiries.

Meanwhile, the police are still considering an application from Cheung to become a prosecution witness to help identify another blackmail victim so far unknown to the court, and more than one additional conspirator.

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