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Alternative therapist arrested after “slapping therapy” deaths of small boy and grandmother.

An alternative therapist being investigated over the death of a seven-year-old boy in Sydney who underwent “slapping therapy” has been arrested in the UK after a woman died at one of his workshops.

Chinese therapist Hongchi Xiao ran a “slapping therapy” workshop in Sydney where a seven-year-old diabetic boy died in 2015.

Aidan Fenton, a year one student from Prospect was found  unconscious and not breathing at the Ritz Hotel in Hurstville on April 30. He died at the scene.

Aidan Fenton, pictured here as a baby, died last year. Via Facebook.

It is believed that, in accordance with the principals of the “slapping therapy” he had fasted and stopped taking his insulin.

A police investigation into the man running the workshop Chinese therapist Honcho Xiao has been underway since his death, but Mr Xiao has not returned to Australia.

In eerily similar circumstances a woman has now also died in the UK.

Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71, is believed to have stopped taking her insulin injections while taking part in an alternative therapy workshop at a British hotel.

The woman had attended a slapping therapy workshop.

The workshop involved controversial paida and lajin therapy, which sees patients being slapped or slapping themselves repeatedly to remove "toxins" causing illnesses.

It is believed Mrs Carr-Gorman, a grandmother of four, had not taken her regular insulin injections and had fasted for three days as part of the alternative therapy which also included painful stretching on a bench.

It wasn’t the first time she had “slapping therapy.”

On a blog page where she wrote about her diabetes, Mrs Carr-Gomm explained that it was the second workshop she had attended by Mr Xiao this year.

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In July she took part in a workshop in Bulgaria.

She said that by the end of her first slapping session, “large areas of my body were bruised blue which indicated that a lot of “sha” or poisoned blood and toxins had been released”.

She also endured “Lajin” - forcible stretching on a bench - for two minutes. She said this “felt like agony and an eternity”.

“My hope is that a second and perhaps third group workshop will help me to heal completely”, she wrote.

She was discovered dead at 3am by a woman who was also on the workshop.

The man who ran the workshop, Honcho Xiao was arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.

Her son Matthew, 43, told the Mail on Sunday his mother had been “a victim of false hope”.

“I am certain that if she hadn’t gone on this course, she would still be alive today,” he said.

“She had a lifelong fear of needs so diabetes was probably the worst illness she could get.

“That was why she was so keen to try alternative therapies.”

Hongchi Xiao

On his website where he promotes ‘Paida-Lajin’ as a “self-healing” slapping and stretching therapy he claims to have cured dozens of illnesses including diabetes.

His website claims that patients can tell what illnesses they have based on the amount of bruising, known as “Sha”, and the colour of the bruising.

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“Sha itself shows the body has started the reduction of body endotoxin and the treatment,”

“Some people will have red Sha first, and after more Paida the colour will turn dark purple or even into dark masses.”

Hongchi Xiao 's flyer. Via Facebook.

When he was 44 he took two years studying medicine and wrote a best seller on self-healing therapies.

He has faced police questioning before over his practises. In 2011 he was asked to leave Taiwan for violating medical treatment laws. He was also fined in 2011 for promoting “folk medicine practices” and claimed “diabetics could be cured after seven days of slap massage.”

The self-proclaimed healer who believes medicine is poison has also claimed that breast cancer strikes women because they aren't “happy” in the mind.

The controversial technique of slapping therapy. Via Facebook.

“I ask those ladies, because it's a ladies problem, you've got a tumour, cancer in your womb and then the question is... do you think they have married a man that they really love?

“If they are dearly loved and if the answer is yes then you will never have this kind of problems, the tumour in the womb or the breast, you would never have that normally. It's always from your heart you get confused you get frustrated you get troubled.”

In the video, uncovered by The Sun, Xiao also claims that Chinese healing should be used before drugs to help women with cancer.

Following the death of Mrs Carr-Gomm he, along with a 64-year-old woman, and a 53-year-old man have been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter.