Charges dropped against 4 Hong Kong prison officers over alleged gang rape as complainant will not testify
Hong Kong Free Press
Hong Kong prosecutors have dropped charges against four prison service officers over an alleged gang rape of a woman in a party room last year because the complainant will not testify.
Prosecutors on Monday applied to withdraw the rape charges against four grade two assistant officers of the Correctional Services Department (CSD) as the case was about to be transferred from Eastern Magistrates’ Courts to the High Court for trial, according to local media reports.
They said the alleged victim “will not testify” and the prosecution believed there would be “no prospect of conviction,” the Witness reported. Magistrate Tsang Chung-yiu granted the prosecution’s application and ordered the charges to be dropped.
The alleged incident took place in the early hours of July 9 last year in a party room in Mirador Mansion, Tsim Sha Tsui. A 31-year-old woman filed a report to the police that she suspected she had been raped while she was drunk following a party at that location.
Police arrested seven male CSD officers in the following days but only three – Wong Chui-fung, 23, Chung Ho-lam, 27, and Mak Yun-leung, 31 – were charged with rape at the time.
The fourth defendant, Yuen Ka-chung, 29, was charged in May. The remaining three suspects – a correctional officer, a grade one assistant officer and a grade two assistant officer – had been released unconditionally due to a lack of evidence for prosecution.
The CSD said in a reply to HKFP last July that the seven officers were suspended from duty and that “the department greatly emphasises the behaviour and conduct of correctional staff and has strict disciplinary requirements.”
Local media reported that the CSD would handle the reinstatement of the officers “according to established mechanism.”
HKFP has reached out to the CSD for comment.
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