HONG KONG - One of Hong Kong's top stars was forced to quit performing after hundreds of his pornographic photos of many of the city's movie starlets hit the Internet.
The country's entertainment industry is in turmoil, as the scandal has left actor and singer Edison Chen reportedly requesting police protection from Triad gangsters.
Police said the explicit pictures first appeared online more than a month ago, when Chen took his laptop into a shop for repairs but forgot to remove the images from its hard drive.
A shop employee and others were arrested under colonial-era obscenity laws. Chen was arrested, but he fled to the United States.
The issue dominated the front pages of Hong Kong's newspapers. Donald Tsang, Hong Kong's chief executive, voiced his concern, and mainland Chinese police were forced to crack down on street hawkers who were selling DVDs of the pictures.
Vancouver-born Chen, 27, known for his bad-boy hip-hop image, returned from the United States on Thursday under heavy police protection. He apologized and announced he was planning to start charity work and quit show business.
"These photos were very private and have not been shown to people and were never intended to be shown to anyone," Chen said. "I have failed as a role model."
As a result of the fallout, Chen has lost a lucrative marketing deal with Pepsi, with China having removed advertising billboards bearing his image.
Several of Hong Kong's tabloid newspapers have reproduced highly explicit photos, but they have not been punished by the city's Obscene Articles Tribunal, which ruled that the images are not indecent.
Chen, who starred in the Hong Kong gangland movie Infernal Affairs, denied rumors that the pictures previously had been shown to showbiz pals.
"He must now wish he had never taken them," a movie industry insider said, "because his career is in tatters and he had angered a lot of powerful people because of the damage he has done to some of the business's biggest moneymaking female stars."
Among the women he photographed was his current girlfriend, Vincy Yeung, niece of Emperor Entertainment Group mogul Albert Yeung Sau-Shing.
Gillian Chung, half of the "girl-next-door" pop duo Twins and one of Chen's former girlfriends, also had her naked image hit the Internet. Last week, she made her first TV appearance since the scandal broke, and producers were inundated with complaints from viewers saying she is a bad role model for youngsters.
"I know Gillian Chung and the other women," said Bey Logan, a former Hong Kong film actor and current vice president of the Harvey Weinstein Group (Asia-Pacific). "I really feel for them. This could seriously damage them. You have to ask yourself, ‘Did they do anything wrong?' Naïve [and] stupid, maybe, but not wrong."
Chen made a video appeal in an attempt to stop the flow of pictures to the Internet.
"If you've ever downloaded any of these images, please do not forward then to anyone," he said in the video. "I urge you to destroy them immediately."
The photos continued hitting the Internet, leading to suggestions that he and others in the higher reaches of the entertainment industry were being blackmailed.
The police, who have assigned a team of 19 detectives to the investigation, declined to comment on the blackmail claims and would not confirm that Chen is under the city's witness protection program.
