Hawaii Is Allowing Registered Sex Offender To Keep Treating Patients
California revoked Edward Hsu’s physical therapy license based on a Hawaii conviction. In Hawaii, both his physical therapy and acupuncture licenses remain in good standing.
A Hawaii acupuncturist and physical therapist convicted of arranging a sexual encounter with an undercover agent he believed to be a 13-year-old boy still has his professional licenses two-and-a-half years later — 20 months after California revoked his license based on the Hawaii judgment.
The state Regulated Industries Complaints Office, which makes cases against licensed professionals, did not directly answer why Hawaii has not yet acted on Edward Hsu’s felony conviction or discuss whether allowing a registered sex offender to continue practicing endangers the public.
“The circumstances of each complaint or investigation are unique, and as such the time towards the closure of a complaint remains varied,” William Nhieu, spokesman for the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs, wrote in an email.
“Licensees have a property interest in a license that cannot be taken away without due process.”
A state database shows that Hsu’s Hawaii licenses are being investigated, presumably as a result of the 2022 conviction from a sting operation targeting pedophiles, but there’s no indication of when or if action will be taken.
“Everywhere in the world, it would be grounds for revocation,” said Michael Taromina, a member of a national organization that certifies acupuncturists.
, the National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, suspended Hsu’s certification based on the Hawaii conviction more than a year ago, in June 2023.
Taromina, who has been trying to get states to share disciplinary information to avoid practitioners jumping from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, said the nature of acupuncture and physical therapy make them inappropriate professions for someone who has violated sexual boundaries.
“It’s not a supervised setting,” he said. “It’s intimate, one-on-one medicine.”
Hsu, through his lawyer, declined to comment.
“There’s a disciplinary proceeding going on and so at this point we cannot,” attorney Mateo Caballero said.
Despite having the highest concentration of acupuncturists in the U.S., Hawaii has disciplined only two practitioners since 2010. By contrast, California has disciplined 178.
Even taking into account that California has 10 times the number of practitioners, the state disciplines them at roughly nine times the rate of Hawaii, according to a Civil Beat analysis of cases posted on government websites.
The case against Hsu began late one evening in 2021, when he started chatting with someone on a social networking service and sent a picture of his naked torso, according to a summary of the case in the California license revocation case file.
After the person replied with a photo, Hsu asked, "How old are you really?"
"13. dat ok?" the person responded.
"Wow, dat's young," Hsu responded.
But Hsu continued making sexual remarks and sent several photos of his erect penis to what he believed to be the 13-year-old boy, according to the case summary. The two agreed to meet at a Maui grocery store. Hsu said he wanted to stop first at a nearby pharmacy to buy an enema kit.
In the grocery store parking lot, Hsu was met not by a teenager but by agents of a Hawaii attorney general task force.
A year later, he pleaded no contest to electronic enticement of a child in the second degree, a felony, and was sentenced to a year in jail.
Some 40 people wrote letters of support saying they knew Hsu to be a compassionate man who stumbled into the sting operation. One described him as "a gentle soul who wouldn't hurt a fly, let alone a human being," at the time.
Hsu's lawyer, meanwhile, said that the case had "severely impacted" his acupuncture and physical therapy business.
But Judge Kirstin Hamman countered what she termed "delusional" and "disturbing" statements from his supporters, the newspaper wrote.
"You were paying attention," Hamman told Hsu. "You knew what you were doing. You were not trapped."
California revoked his physical therapist license around the time he was released from jail in early 2023. The California board found that Hsu had been convicted of a crime substantially related to functions and duties of a physical therapist.
the state physical therapy board to "promptly" revoke the license of a practitioner who is required to register as a sex offender. The state has analogous requirements for several other professions, . However, Hsu's California acupuncture license had expired while he was still in jail, so the board did not need to revoke it.
Hawaii, by contrast, apparently has no law or regulation requiring professional licenses to be revoked when the practitioner must register as a sex offender.
Hsu's Hawaii physical therapist license also expired during his jail term, in December 2022. He filed an application to restore the license and, on July 5, 2023, the state board overseeing physical therapists granted his request. That license expires at the end of this year.
In June 2023, Hsu also applied to renew his Hawaii acupuncture license. That was approved by the state acupuncture board less than a week later.
In a meeting that month of the state acupuncture board, a board member asked about what happens when licensees disclose convictions. Executive officer Risé Doi replied that in such cases, she approves the renewal and sends that case to RICO for investigation.
"If RICO finds that the license is in violation, a settlement agreement will be brought to the board for review," Doi said, according to the meeting minutes.
RICO has the power to suspend a license in emergencies. But the statute requires a hearing in 20 days, which RICO previously told Civil Beat it considers impractical because a practitioner's attorney could keep getting extensions and drag out the case.
Today, a member of the public who wanted to check on Hsu's licenses, 20 months after California revoked them, would get this message: "Current, Valid & In Good Standing."
A button near the bottom of the page allows consumers to go to a different website to check past and current complaints. That separate website indicates that there are pending investigations of Hsu's two licenses, presumably the result of his conviction two-and-a-half years ago, though it does not say so. Nor does it describe the nature of the cases against him.
Hsu has continued to practice. According to a June bankruptcy filing by Hsu and his partner, he had business income from physical therapy and acupuncture of $4,200 a month. After expenses such as $1,300 for rent, his net monthly income amounted to $2,740.
Hsu stated he made $20,816 operating his business in 2023 and $10,349 in 2022. He was in jail for part of both those years.
Hawaii has by far the highest concentration of acupuncturists in the U.S.: nearly 53 per 100,000 residents, compared to just over 10 per 100,000 for the nation as a whole, according to in the Journal of Integrative Medicine.
Yet the state almost never disciplines acupuncturists.
The most recent case in the last 14 years involved Mike Hashimoto, a onetime member of the state regulatory board.
In 2016, a patient alleged that Hashimoto had stroked her groin and touched her vagina during an acupuncture session. Three years later, the acupuncture board signed a settlement agreement in which Hashimoto, without admitting to legal violations, conceded there was sufficient cause for the state to seek discipline.
He was allowed to retain his license only to instruct acupuncture students, but was required to close down his business.
Yet in March 2023, Civil Beat reported that Hashimoto had recently filed a complaint with the state that he had been shortchanged by an insurance company for his acupuncture treatment of a woman who had been in a car accident. The document showed that he was continuing to treat patients in violation of the consent agreement.
That April, the board revoked his license.
Only one other acupuncturist has been disciplined, his license suspended for one year on 2010.
Civil Beat analyzed publicly available disciplinary cases against acupuncturists in several large states with large numbers of practitioners and found that acupuncturists in Hawaii are far less likely to be sanctioned.
The analysis took into account total public disciplinary actions since 2010 and the total number of acupuncturists per state in 2023, according to the Journal of Integrative Medicine. The analysis showed that since 2010, Texas disciplined acupuncturists at 8.7 times the rate of Hawaii, California 9.3 times, Florida 4.9 times and New York 2.4 times.
"Those numbers you're telling me means that complaints are submitted and they died on the vine," Taromina, with the national certification organization, said. "There's no way it's a valid public protection agency."
