Retired Hong Kong TCM practitioner gets nearly 6 years in jail for molesting 3 women during ‘Taoist ritual’
- Peter Chow Kwok-keung, 65, penetrated his victims using his hands and asked a mother and daughter to perform indecent acts on each other
- Court hears mother sought treatment from Chow because she believed her daughter was cursed after a break-up and that the girl’s friend was haunted by a ghost
A retired traditional Chinese medicine practitioner in Hong Kong has been sentenced to five years and 10 months in jail for molesting three women during what he called a “Taoist ritual”.
District Court Judge Anthony Kwok Kai-on on Thursday hit out at Peter Chow Kwok-keung’s “despicable” assault, which involved the 65-year-old penetrating the victims using his hands, as well as asking a mother and her then 16-year-old daughter to perform indecent acts on each other for his sexual satisfaction.
The court heard that the mother sought treatment from the defendant because she believed her daughter was cursed after a break-up with her ex-boyfriend and worried that the girl’s female friend, then 17, was being haunted by a ghost.
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“The defendant took advantage of the mother’s blind faith and came up with a so-called Taoist ritual to commit the assault on these women in the name of treatment,” Kwok said in his sentencing.
He stressed that the Chinese medicine practitioner, who is registered, clearly breached the trust of the mother and daughter since he had been their family doctor.
The defendant was found guilty of seven sexual offences, which included six counts of indecent assault on the three women in their residence in Sheung Wan between February and September 2021.
He molested the daughter and her friend separately on three occasions, using his hands, a Buddha amulet and pomelo leaf.
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During the treatment session, Chow once forced the daughter to put her fingers into the mother’s anus so that the “ghost” inside her would “migrate” to the latter’s body.
He was convicted of a separate count of procuring another person to do an unlawful sexual act by false pretences.
Judge Kwok described Chow as a “complete voyeur with a twisted mindset”, slamming him for repeatedly exploiting two young girls.
The girls put a stop to the serial assault by reporting it to social workers at school.
Kwok ordered the defendant to serve six years in jail for all seven charges, although he reduced the sentence by two months to reflect Chow’s clear record.
