Sonny Hang Chin (65), who calls himself a "Chi master body technician", has spent more than two weeks on trial at the Dunedin District Court, facing 13 counts of indecent assault.
Today, after nearly seven hours of deliberation, the jury returned guilty verdicts on 10 of the charges and not guilty on three.
Chin maintained the permanent smile which he has worn throughout the trial but briefly shook his head once his fate was revealed.
He was declined bail and will be sentenced in June.
Chin molested the patients over 13 years and the jury heard how it continued even after police had warned him.
When a woman came forward in 2016, officers discovered an earlier complaint on file from 2012.
Both said Chin had been treating them when he groped their breasts without warning.
One told the jury it did not feel like a massage; "he squeezed them and moved them around".
She also described the defendant poking her pelvic area.
"I just froze. I went dead cold, the blood just drained out of my body," the victim said.
When Detective Wayne O’Connell interviewed Chin about the two complaints, the healer denied any sexual touching but accepted his work had perhaps not been "best practice".
"I’ve got to explain more to people what I’m actually doing. But if I leave energy half stuck it’s not good for them either," he said.
"I’m not there to be a sexual pervert, I’m not like that in my work. My work is strictly professional."
But little changed.
Three more women approached police after sessions with Chin in 2019.
One of them described Chin touching her breasts and one occasion when he put his hand inside her underwear and cupped her genitalia.
He urged the victim to tell him to stop and when she did, he said: "easy, see".
Like several of the women, the victim whose complaint instigated the most recent police inquiry, said Chin quizzed her about historical sexual abuse and tensions within her family.
As she lay on her back on a massage table, the defendant slipped his hand under her top and bra and indecently assaulted her.
As a result, Chin was again interviewed by police in February 2020, dominating an hour-long conversation with explanations about his qigong techniques.
He claimed he had to act quickly with that patient, who was being overwhelmed by her trauma, and had received consent to touch her breasts.
"She was triggered, she was sinking and I had to save her.... otherwise they stay in a semi-zombie state," Chin told police.
During the trial, the court also heard from a woman who sought treatment for back pain from the defendant in 2016.
She said Chin was working on her sternum when a bizarre sex attack took place.
"Towards the end of it when he was doing that he pulled my bra down and bit my nipple. I just lay there thinking ‘What the hell was that?’," she said.
Counsel Anne Stevens KC told jurors Chin accepted - aside from the bite - that he had touched his clients in sensitive areas but that it had always been in the context of treatment.
The women had consented to the physical contact, she said.
"This is not your normal therapeutic massage," reads Chin’s website. "We are trouble shooters for your mind, body, and emotions. To bring back in harmony with the invisible Chi dish centre line that you need to develop for inner peace."
