UK case harks back to Hong Kong attack

A former Hong Kong woman who emerged victorious from a bitter courtroom battle in London this week was at the centre of a high-profile legal controversy more than two decades ago which helped re-shape attitudes towards domestic violence in the city.

Hostilities between wealthy divorcee Ann Hersmen-Wilkinson and a her ex-husband, a former Cathay Pacific pilot, were renewed in Central London County Court last week – more than 25 years after he was arrested and charged over a knife attack on her at their New Territories home.

On Monday, 72-year-old Hersmsen-Wikinson walked out of court armed with the legal right to evict her 45-year-old daughter, Caroline Hersmen, from an HK$11 million flat she owns in the upmarket Kensington district of England’s capital after Judge Simon Monty QC ruled she did not give, or promise to give, the flat to her daughter.

It was the end of a bruising legal tussle which exposed a venomous 30-year feud between mother and daughter that began when the pair - along with Hersmen-Wilkinson’s then husband, Cathay Pacific pilot Ian Wilkinson, moved to Hong Kong in 1985.

Ian Wilkinson gave evidence against his ex-wife at the London hearing which was told that the mother-daughter feud festered in Hong Kong for years and, according to Caroline, exploded when her mother called the police and had her arrested for stealing the family’s dog ‘’Fluffy’’.

Hersmen-Wilkinson rejected that version of events saying she was simply worried that her ‘’out of control’’ daughter had gone missing, ‘’could be in the company of a herion-dealing triad gangster’’ and simply added that Fluffy the dog was missing too.