Alleged rape victim was misled about assailant’s sex in online chats, Hong Kong court hears
- Alleged victim only knew she was with a man at the moment of intercourse, prosecution says, alleging Tsang Tsz-ho misrepresented himself in multiple online venues
- ‘[She] was only willing to engage in intimate conduct with the defendant because she thought the defendant was a woman,’ High Court jury told
An unemployed Hong Kong man raped a woman who agreed to an encounter believing she was meeting another lesbian, only to discover his true sex at the moment of intercourse, a High Court jury heard on Monday.
In opening their case, prosecutors said 30-year-old Tsang Tsz-ho, who has denied the allegations, met his alleged victim through the social-networking app Butterfly, which markets itself as “Hong Kong’s largest lesbian forum”, in November 2019.
They then chatted on another dating app for lesbian and queer women, known as HER, before exchanging numbers to continue their conversation on WhatsApp.
Prosecutor Lisa D’Almada Remedios said that on February 24 last year Tsang mentioned seeing the woman – identified in court only as X – on a Telegram group devoted to discussions about S&M and asked to meet her in a hotel room to engage in related activities, to which X agreed.
During further conversations, the defendant was explicitly told that X only had sexual encounters involving women, the prosecutor said.
Three days later, on February 27, the pair met at Hotel COZi in Kwun Tong and engaged in intimate sexual conduct without protection.
Remedios said it was only during intercourse that X discovered Tsang was a man and immediately tried to push him away, finally succeeding after several attempts.
The prosecutor argued Tsang had known about X’s sexual orientation and deliberately concealed the fact he was a man.
“X was only willing to engage in intimate conduct with the defendant because she thought the defendant was a woman,” the prosecutor told the jury. “Had she known the defendant was a man, X would not have agreed to have sex with him.”
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X reported the case to police the same day.
Police later collected the bedsheets from the hotel room and a subsequent test revealed two semen stains. Tsang was arrested the next day on suspicion of rape.
In a videotaped interview, Tsang said he knew the term lesbian meant relations between two women and recalled X rushing out of the hotel room after asking if he was a man.
The jury trial continues before Mr Justice Joseph Yau Chi-lap on Tuesday.
