Sex with five or six women 'all part of fate-changing ritual'

A truck driver who a young model alleged duped her into having sex as part of a Taoist Mao Shan ritual told the court yesterday that he had sex with five or six women as part of rituals to 'change their fate' over a 10-year period.

Testifying in the District Court yesterday, Au Yeung Kwok-fu, a self-proclaimed Mao Shan practitioner, said he had learned Mao Shan rituals - including the one that required him to have sex with a woman - from a 'master' surnamed Liu in Tiu Keng Leng when he was 19. He had also spent six months learning Mao Shan in Thailand in 1983.

Throughout his three-year apprenticeship with 'Master Liu', he was taught that the ritual involving sexual intercourse aimed to 'change one's fate' and could only be performed on women.

The subject's ba zi - which literally means 'eight characters' and refers to the year, month, day and hour of a person's birth as expressed in four pairs of characters - needed to be calculated to reveal her suitability.

He had told his defence barrister, Christopher Wong, that he had once witnessed Master Liu perform the ritual.

While Au Yeung had performed it with five to six women, he had also refused to perform it with 11 or 12 others because a calculation of their ba zi showed it was not suitable for them.

Au Yeung, 55, earning a yearly salary of HK$180,000 as a driver, has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of having unlawful sexual intercourse by false pretence between April and December 2007.