Hong Kong woman ‘helped trap and arrest her own attacker’, High Court hears
- The 24-year-old construction worker now faces four charges, involving two further accusers
- They include 12-year-old girl who said he threatened to publish nude photos of her
A Hong Kong woman helped arrest a man linked to a series of sexual assault complaints by setting him up after he tried to rape her, prosecutors told a court on Monday.
But construction worker Wong Tsz-hin has denied all the claims of his three accusers, who included a 12-year-old girl who further accused him of threatening to publish nude photos of her.
The 24-year-old has pleaded not guilty to one count each of rape, attempted rape, unlawful sex with a girl under 16 and criminal intimidation.
All of the offences were said to have taken place within 18 days, from September 23 to October 13 last year.
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None of the complainants can be identified, for legal reasons.
Opening the case before a jury of seven men, prosecutor Lisa Remedios said Wong met all three victims online via Facebook, where he befriended them as 19-year-old “Anson Tsui”.
One of the victims, a woman identified only as Z in court, said she first met “Anson Tsui” in June 2018 and went out with him a few times until late August, each time allowing him to accompany her home.
Before she stopped seeing him in August, Z had come to know a woman known as Tracy on Instagram, and met the woman in person to collect an online purchase.
On October 10, Remedios said, Z agreed to meet Tracy for breakfast after the latter claimed that she was in her neighbourhood in Ngau Tau Kok.
But as Z waited on her floor lobby, she found Wong by the staircase.
Z claimed he then pulled her into the stairwell and indicated that he wanted to have sex with her, so she immediately went to call police.
But Wong allegedly snatched her phone away, so she bit his hand to run away and report the case.
The court heard “Anson Tsui” caught her attention again five days later when he posted an advertisement on Facebook selling second-hand toys.
So she asked her boyfriend to pose as a buyer responding to the ad, and informed police once it was arranged for the two men to meet at Tsuen Wan station on October 18.
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Wong was arrested on that day, after Z arrived with police and identified him as her attacker.
Under caution for the indecent assault of Z, he told police: “My girlfriend asked me to have breakfast with her. We hugged each other.”
Four days later, he was arrested over a rape the previous month.
This time he told officers: “I’d like to see the victim’s picture because I don’t know which one.”
A second alleged victim, 16, claimed she was raped the first time she met him, a day after accepting his request on Facebook, when he took her up to the staircase between the 27th and 28th floors of a residential block in Tuen Mun on September 23, 2018.
A police report was made after her father learned about the alleged assault from her social worker.
The third complainant, 12, said she and the defendant, whom she met on Facebook, became “lovers” after she befriended him during the summer holidays that year.
On October 6, the girl agreed to meet in Tuen Mun and they had sex on a building staircase despite her initial protests, Remedios said.
The girl claimed he then asked her for nude pictures and demanded another meeting on October 13.
Wong allegedly threatened to publish the photos and break up with her when she refused to meet again.
Out of fear, the girl then reported the case to her classmates and the police.
The trial continues before deputy High Court judge Johnny Chan Jong-herng.
