Hong Kong man with foot fetish convicted for third time over theft of women’s shoe
The 28-year-old, who is training to be a Christian counsellor, committed similar offences in 2013 and 2014
A 28-year-old man training to be a Christian counsellor admitted on Thursday that he stole a women’s shoe for the third time last March to satisfy a sexual fetish he developed as a child.
The District Court heard Li Cheuk-yin was intercepted by police as soon as he left a tenement building in Tsuen Wan, as a plain clothes officer thought he looked suspicious while carrying a recycling bag. A women’s leather shoe was inside the bag.
Li admitted upon arrest that he had taken the shoe from a flat with an unlocked gate and revealed that his fetishism began when he was young.
On Thursday, Li pleaded guilty to one count of burglary before deputy district judge Raymond Wong Kwok-fai, adding to two earlier convictions of burglary in 2013 and theft in 2014, where he also took ladies’ footwear, including a pair of child’s dancing shoes.
Defence counsel Cherry Hui Shuk-yee said in mitigation that Li had been struggling to keep his fetish under control since he was eight and had been receiving regular treatment once every three months from 2012.
On March 17 last year, Hui said her client intended to visit a Chinese doctor in the Tsuen Wan building during his lunch break from church service when he was suddenly overcome by a desire to look for women’s shoes. The search led him to commit his offence.
Sentencing guidelines for burglary on domestic premises recommend a jail term starting at three years.
But Hui appealed for leniency, saying Li was driven by illness not greed and had been remorseful since his offence.
Li, she revealed, had tried to improve his condition by enrolling in a Bachelor of Christian Counselling course, which he hoped could teach him how to help himself and others.
Li will be sentenced on February 22, pending reports on his psychological and psychiatric condition and whether he would be suited to community service.