Three held as woman dies during Chinese ‘slap therapy’ course
A WOMAN with diabetes has died during a ‘self-healing’ retreat where participants were slapped until they were black and blue – after apparently failing to take her insulin.
Danielle Carr-Gomm was found dead in her bedroom just hours after taking part in one of the healing workshops at Cleeve House country hotel in Seend, near Melksham in Wiltshire.
It is understood she had such faith in the controversial alternative treatment that she may have gone to bed without taking her insulin.
Wiltshire Police have arrested three people in connection with the ‘suspicious’ death of the 71-yearold, a divorced grandmother of four from Lewes, East Sussex.
A spokeswoman said: ‘We are currently treating her death as sus- picious and inquiries are ongoing. Three people – a 64-year-old woman, a 51-year-old man and a 53-year-old man – have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.’
An inquest into Mrs Carr-Gomm’s death was opened and adjourned at Salisbury Coroner’s Court on Friday.
The week-long Self-Healing Workshop, costing up to £750, was run by Hongchi Xiao, a self-styled Chinese healer from Beijing.
Mr Xiao believes ‘toxins’ causing illness can be eradicated from the body by hard, repeated slapping and painful stretching on a bench, a technique called Paida-Lajin.
The ‘treatment’ also involves fasting for days on end.
Mr Xiao has previously been questioned by Australian police over the death of a seven-year-old diabetic boy during a workshop in Sydney – but no charges were brought – and fined by Taiwanese authorities for ‘promoting folk remedies’.
Carlo Zacca, manager of Cleeve House, said yesterday that Mrs CarrGomm was found dead after going to bed. He said she was found at around 3am by a woman who was also on the workshop, and with whom she was sharing a room.
The Wiltshire retreat was the second run by Mr Xiao that Mrs Carr-Gomm had attended this year, according to a detailed blog she wrote in August about her battle with diabetes.
In July she went to one in Bulgaria, where she owned a home. She wrote that at the end of her first ‘Paida’ slapping session ‘large areas of my body were bruised and blue which indicated that a lot of “sha” or poisoned blood and toxins had been released’. The following day she endured two minutes of ‘Lajin’ – forcible stretching on a bench – ‘which felt like agony and an eternity’. For the next two days she decided to stop taking insulin, the hormone that many diabetics must take to regulate blood sugar levels. Missing doses can be fatal. After discovering her blood glucose readings were ‘sky high’ she resumed her insulin injections. Undeterred, she wrote: ‘My hope is that a second and perhaps third group workshop will help me to heal completely.’ Mrs Carr-Gomm, who had type one diabetes, wrote about how she had tried alternative therapies such as ‘a seven-day fruit fast, Chinese herbal remedies, acupuncture, and a costly stem cell transplant in Germany.’ Last night her son Matthew, 43, claimed his mother had been ‘a victim of false hope’ and added: ‘I am certain that if she hadn’t gone on this course, she would still be alive today. ‘She was convinced this alternative treatment was going to have a positive effect. ‘She had a lifelong fear of needles so diabetes was probably the worst illness she could get. That was why she was so keen to try alternative therapies.’