By The SUN
 |
| Eastern Magistrate Edward Wong will give his verdict on Dec 14 |
In the end, it became a case of “she said, he
said.”
This essentially sums up the re-trial of
84-year-old retired British doctor Brian Drew Apthorp, who is charged with three
counts of indecent assault against his former Filipina domestic helper,
referred to as “X” during the court hearings.
The prosecution ended up relying merely on the
testimony of X in trying to prove its case against Apthorp, after the video
clips, photographs and the helper’s notebook which the police had collected as
part of the evidence, were not admitted in the re-trial.
Through about three days of testimony, X
related the events which formed the bases for the three separate acts of
indecent assaults that the octogenarian doctor had allegedly committed towards
her, including fondling her during a supposed medical check-up, and forcing her
to masturbate him during massage sessions.
In turn, the defense subjected her to intense
cross-examination, through which the helper was pictured as a scheming woman
who only wanted money from the frail and elderly employer. In his closing
statement, the defense lawyer said X’s testimony was riddled with “demonstrable
lies.”
At the close of the trial on Friday, Eastern
Court Magistrate Edward Wong said he would give his verdict in the case on Dec.
14, and extended Apthorp’s bail of $201,000 until then.
The High Court ordered the re-trial on April
29 this year, after setting aside Apthorp’s conviction by Magistrate Daniel Tang in July last year. Tang sentenced the defendant to 30 months in jail after finding him guilty on two counts of indecent assault.
Judge Esther Toh ruled the conviction unsafe
and unsatisfactory because of Tang’s refusal to allow solicitor Jonathan
Midgley, who was hired belatedly by Apthorp to defend him, to cross-examine X.
At the start of the re-trial, the defense had
tried to ask for a “permanent stay of proceedings” in the case against Apthorp,
citing as one of the grounds the supposed deterioration in the defendant’s
health and the inadequacy of the evidence against him.
Wong rejected the application, but asked
the prosecution to amend the second charge, saying it was too broad in scope.
Apthorp originally faced two counts of
indecent assault, one that allegedly happened on Sept. 11, 2018 while the
second charged covered several occasions between November 2018 and April 2019.
The defense objected to the second charge,
saying it lacked particulars and that the agreed facts did not mention that the
assaults happened on multiple occasions during the period indicated.
The prosecution agreed to amend the second charge,
and ended up splitting it into two charges. The second charge pertained to an
incident that allegedly happened between November and December 2018, and the
third, in April 2019.
All of the alleged incidents happened inside
Apthorp’s house at 35B, Shouson Hill Road.
The re-trial commenced after Apthorp pleaded not
guilty to all charges.
X was the only witness called for the
prosecution. She said that a few days after she began working for Apthorp, the
elderly man told her to go to his room for a medical examination. But the
employer ended up fondling her breasts before inserting something hard into her
private parts.
X said she was too shocked to resist, but kept
her eyes closed during the entire proceeding. Later, she complained to a fellow
Filipina helper, Janice Villanueva, who was then about to leave for Canada
after working for Apthorp for several years. The other helper reportedly
assured her that it was just a regular check-up that the doctor conducts on his
household staff.
The two other incidents pertained to massage
sessions with Apthorp, during which X said he would always be asked by the
employer to “empty his balls,” or for her to masturbate him. X said she did as
she was told even if it disgusted her because she was scared of losing her job.
During cross-examination, the defense lawyer
asked X about certain money matters, including a loan she supposedly asked the
doctor for so she could have dental surgery done in the Philippines.
X said she went home that time not because of
any dental work, but because of Immigration’s policy for foreign domestic
workers to “exit” Hong Kong within a year of moving to a new employer.
Defense also brought up the $163,000
compensation claim that X had filed against Apthorp with the Equal
Opportunities Commission, and her subsequent civil action for more than $1
million in damages, suggesting she was only after his money.
X denied all the counter-accusations.
She also denied Apthorp had fired her because
she stopped going to his house while he was away on holiday. X said she was in
touch with the employer regularly via email and that he had only wanted to make
it appear that she had disappeared so he could pretend to have fired her.
In a separate case for a judicial review, a
High Court judge ruled in favor of X’s application to challenge the government’s
failure to properly investigate her more serious allegations of trafficking and
forced labor against Apthorp.
Judge Russell Coleman agreed with X, and said
the authorities had prematurely curtailed their investigation into her case. He
ordered for an investigation into her case to be reopened.
However, the Department of Justice merely said
it would study the judgment and “consider the way forward.”
