A Hong Kong man has been jailed for four months after he admitted to spraying women’s buttocks with liquid.

Magistrate Jason Wan meted out the prison term to 56-year-old construction worker Li Kwok-ding on Tuesday, after he pleaded guilty to three counts of common assault in connection with the attacks on three women in Mong Kok and Causeway Bay earlier this year.

According to local media reports on Tuesday, the attacks occurred between February 5 and 23 outside Mong Kok MTR station exit E, Tung Choi Street and Great George Street, respectively.

Between January and February, police received reports from multiple female victims, who said they had been sprayed with unknown liquid around their intimate areas when they were in Mong Kok. Some said the liquid had no taste nor smell and was warm, while some said it smelled of urine.

Local media reported that the police reviewed CCTV footage and found that two women, identified in court as X and Y, both discovered a wet patch around their buttocks while walking in Mong Kok. Y was sprayed again while she was on her way to buy a new pair of pants.

Police later identified the suspect and caught him after he assaulted a third woman, Z, in Causeway Bay. Under police caution, Li told officers that he had sprayed liquid on other women before and that he “could not control” himself, media reports read. The liquid he used was water, he claimed.

Li also told the police that he had mental health issues for around two decades and had stopped taking medication recently.

The magistrate eventually sentenced Li to four months behind bars. He had been detained in a psychiatric ward after his arrest in late February.

In 2008, a 40-year-old man with the same name as the defendant was convicted of indecent assault for spilling semen on a woman’s bum in public.  

In March, HKFP spoke to the administrator of an Instagram page titled “Pissed-us-off,” which shared stories of women who experienced a similar attack. The cases reported to the page were scattered around Hong Kong in areas including Mong Kok, Causeway Bay and Wan Chai, an escalator at Lam Tin and a bus terminal at Tung Chung. 

The earliest case dated back to 2004 and nearly all victims had been splashed around the buttocks. While some said the liquid was water, others reported the smell of urine and some feared it may have been semen. 

Gender studies scholars told HKFP that pouring water on women was a form of sexual violence known as street harassment.

💡If you are suffering from sexual or domestic violence, regardless of your age or gender, contact the police, Harmony House (click for details) and/or the Social Welfare Department on 28948896. Dial 999 in emergencies.

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