AN ACTOR at the centre of a sex scandal that has gripped China yesterday told a court of the “very huge shock” he had when thousands of photographs of him in bed with women, including well-known Hong Kong performers, surfaced on the internet.
Edison Chen was testifying against a man accused of accessing his laptop, which contained the images. The Chinese-Canadian actor and singer quit the entertainment business last year, after weeks of lurid headlines and pictures in Hong Kong erased his clean-cut image.
The story became such an obsession online that it crashed several computer servers and prompted the intervention of the territory’s Catholic bishop, who urged people not to send the photographs on to others. In China, some websites discussing the scandal received more than 25 million hits.
Chen, who fled to his childhood home of British Columbia after the affair shattered his career, attended a Vancouver courtroom yesterday to testify against the defendant, Ho Chun Sze, who faces three counts of obtaining access to a computer with illegal intent.
Chen refused to return to Hong Kong for the trial and the territory’s chief magistrate, Tong Man, went to Canada for the session.
“I’m quite a private person . . . I need my privacy,” said Chen, who has starred in several films, including the Infernal Affairs crime thriller series.
Eight of Hong Kong’s best-known singers and actors appeared in the pictures. On the orders of the Canadian judge, Chen confirmed the names of some of those shown.
The women he identified had been viewed as role models and their careers came to a shuddering halt after the exposure.
Police said the images were illegally copied from Chen’s MacBook, which was taken for repairs in 2006. He described the theft of the photos as an invasion of privacy, adding: “Everything was consensual.” The trial continues