HK star testifies in racy photos scandal

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-02-24 11:24

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The Chinese film star in a racy photo scandal that showed him in bed with eight of the country's best-known actresses and singers testified Monday against the person accused of accessing his private laptop, which held the images.

The scandal dominated Hong Kong headlines for weeks last year, and search engines allegedly helped spread the photos of the stars apparently performing sex acts or in sexually suggestive poses.

"I'm quite a private person. I enjoy my privacy. I need my privacy," said the Canadian-born Edison Chen, star of a popular series of Hong Kong action films. "This was never meant for anyone else to see."

Edison Chen and Gillian Chung

Police say the images were illegally copied from the laptop of Chen, who left show business after apologizing for the scandal. Some of the pages hosting the photos at the time received more than 25 million hits, and the celebrity feeding frenzy crashed the web in Hong Kong.

Chen said the images were released in spurts.

"It was more of an attack, a well-planned attack in the way these images were released," he said.

Chen told the judges he would not answer questions about the women. "I am determined to protect their innocence," he said. "They have suffered enough."

A reluctant Chen was ordered by the Canadian judge to confirm the identities of some women in the pictures, including singer Gillian Chung and actress Cecilia Cheung.

The series of photographs showing Chen in bed with eight of well-known actresses and singers surfaced on the Internet in January 2008. Chen said that the computer was taken for repairs in the summer of 2006. He said he thought he had deleted the images from the computer.

"That strongly led me to believe that there was some foul play in this computer store," he said.

Chen also testified that he noticed that a second laptop went missing when he was moving last year, but told the judge he did not disclose his password to anyone.

Then on January 29, 2008, he said his friends started contacting him about the images circulating on the Internet.

"This was a very huge shock to me," Chen told the court.

A month later, a police inspector showed him a compact disk of photographs.

"Of course, I had seen these pictures. I took these pictures. They were in my personal computer," he said.

Chen called the theft of the photos an "invasion of privacy."

"Everything was consensual," he said.

Chen, a rap singer and star of a popular series of Hong Kong action films, apologized last year for the scandal and left the entertainment business, recently returning to his childhood home of British Columbia.

He refused to return to Hong Kong for the case. Hong Kong Chief Magistrate Tong Man flew to Vancouver to hear the evidence.

Canadian Department of Justice lawyer Kerry Swift said the testimony will become part of the case in Hong Kong.

Dozens of Chinese-language and English-language photographers and media gathered at the Canadian court for Chen's appearance.