A disgraced Dunedin healer, currently on parole for sex offences against seven women, has admitted another workplace groping.
Sonny Hang Chin, 67, appeared in the Dunedin District Court this morning where he was granted bail until his sentencing in August.
In June 2023 a jury found him guilty of 10 counts of indecent assault and he was jailed for three years three months.
The Parole Board released him in January with nearly 18 months remaining on his sentence on the basis he was assessed as a low risk and there was no treatment available to him behind bars.
In March, though, Corrections made an application for Chin to be returned to prison to continue serving his sentence.
It can now be revealed, now suppression has lapsed, that that was on the basis of the new charge being laid.
The Parole Board declined to recall Chin and he remains in the community on parole.
The court today heard the new allegation arose during the defendant’s previous jury trial but the charge was only laid in March.
Court documents said the newest victim, aged in her 30s, visited the “self-described massage master” in May 2015, suffering from back pain.
At her next appointment the following month, Chin was applying pressure to her back while she lay on a table, fully clothed.
“The defendant spoke of energy and chi,” a police summary said.
Chin then told the woman she “should be ashamed of how she used her body to manipulate men”.
The victim described feeling “very attacked” and urged the defendant to focus on her back pain.
Instead, Chin embarked on a bizarre groping.
“The defendant put a hand on either leg, just below her knees. The defendant, while holding the victim’s legs, said ‘you have two working legs’, before saying ‘two arms’, while grabbing her arms,” court documents said.
“The defendant then said ‘two breasts’ as he grabbed each of the victim’s breasts with a cupped hand.”
The victim left immediately.
When interviewed by police, Chin said he did not remember the woman.
At his 2023 trial, the Dunedin District Court heard from a string of Chin’s former clients who gave similar accounts of the sexual assaults they suffered.
Chin would attempt to convince the women they had unresolved trauma as a result of sexual abuse they had supposedly suffered.
He told the jury his acts, which comprised a variety of indecent touching – and included biting one woman’s nipple - were an urgent response to relieve the victims of the negative energy they harboured.
But his long-winded explanations were firmly rejected.
Chin continued the protracted monologues about energy readings with the Parole Board while also claiming he accepted his crimes.
Judge Dominic Flatley noted the historical nature of the new crime and granted the defendant bail until sentencing.
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