Sonny Hang Chin (65) has spent two weeks on trial at the Dunedin District Court on 13 charges of indecent assault against his patients over a 13-year period.
All the complainants — plus two propensity witnesses — said the "qigong master" had groped their breasts during appointments and some said he had touched their pubic area.
One told the court Chin had bitten her nipple during a session.
Counsel Anne Stevens KC summarised the decision the jury faced in her closing address yesterday.
"You have a stark choice between accepting the Crown position that Sonny Chin is a sexual offender preying on vulnerable women under the pretext of practising some self-created treatment, or the defence position that Sonny Chin is a very skilled body technician utilising ancient practices of qigong to provide holistic care and clear the energy blockages that impede his clients’ good health," she said.
"It’s tempting to take the view that if 10 people believed his behaviour indecent and police warned him, he must be guilty. To think like that is not impartial."
Crown prosecutor Pip Norman urged the jurors not to get "bogged down in detail" and said the key issue would be whether the complainants were consenting or whether Chin believed they were.
She said the women that formed the basis of the Crown case gave "compelling, clear, truthful evidence" of incidents which were "strikingly similar".
In contrast, Ms Norman said Chin was deliberately evasive and tailored detailed descriptions of events in a bid to exonerate himself.
Mrs Stevens argued the opposite: in some cases her client had described more contact with his clients’ breasts than they had.
"I suggest it’s because he’s being honest," she said.
The defendant told the court during the trial that he did not take notes during or after treating patients and that he saw about 240 women a year.
That would mean that since 2006 the healer would have seen more than 3500 women.
"How could Mr Chin give a detailed account of what happened in those sessions? Blow by blow," Mrs Norman said.
She compared his exhaustive descriptions with the complainants’ versions of events.
They were willing to accept, she said, that they could not remember every part of their appointments, but they were unequivocal about the alleged indecent assaults.
"All were very clear that the touching they took issue with was something much more targeted at their breasts," she said.
Two of the complainants described the alleged groping identically, as a "claw-like" grab.
Mrs Stevens stressed the majority of the allegations were of fleeting touches.
"Mr Chin’s contact in each instance was reading or releasing energy," she said.
"It’s not the focus, the breast contact, it’s the energy line."
None of the women took issue with Chin’s actions as they occurred, explaining that they were shocked and frozen.
"We hear about fight and flight ... but far more common is freeze," Ms Norman said.
It reinforced the authenticity of their accounts, she said.
Mrs Stevens had a different take.
"We all have a tendency with memory to rewrite history."
Regretted consent was still consent, she told the jurors.
Chin’s legal team called four female clients who had been treated by him, all of whom said the defendant had informed them of what he was doing and clearly sought consent if making contact with or near a sensitive area.
Ms Norman said it was not the Crown case that the man always touched women without consent, but that it happened to the complainants.
Judge David Robinson will sum up the case this morning before the jury considers its verdicts.
