Academic Lee Ngok cleared in sex assault charges
Judge rules accusers of Lee Ngok unreliable in alleging sexual misconduct when the three of them were co-workers at a private college
A prominent academic accused of sexually assaulting two colleagues has been cleared as a judge decided the witnesses against him were unreliable.
Magistrate So Wai-tak said one accuser of Lee Ngok, 73, the former deputy president of a non-profit further education college, was not an "honest witness" because of suspicious timing in her allegations against him.
So said some of the evidence presented by the accuser known only as X, 39, also appeared to be contradictory. The other accuser, known as Y, 32, also waited too long to come forward, So decided, saying her memory of the events was vague.
So suggested the accusations stemmed from financial motives.
The two women accused Lee of the assaults last year. X said Lee had touched her inappropriately and tried to kiss her while they were reviewing papers in 2010, and had touched her inappropriately as far back as 2007. Y said Lee had sexually assaulted her in offices at City University, Kowloon Tong, between March and October 2010.
X said she had not come forward until last year because the college for which she worked had been going through an accreditation process at the time of the alleged assaults. But So pointed out that she had left the institution in 2011 and could have come forward then.
So said that judging from the way X gave evidence, she was in no way "weak" or "introverted".