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.