A British woman blamed for triggering an earthquake by posing naked on a sacred mountain has pleaded guilty during an appearance at a Malaysian court today.
Eleanor Hawkins, 23, is among a group of Western backpackers arrested after photos emerged of them stripping naked on Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia.
The four Westerners accused disagreed with some of the facts that were presented to them by a court aid,they challenged the aid over a claim that they told their guide to 'shut up' and 'go to hell'.
Sabah state deputy chief minister Joseph Pairin Kitingan blamed the earthquake six days later on travellers showing 'disrespect to the sacred mountain' by stripping off and taking naked photos. A magnitude-5.9 earthquake struck the 13,400ft-high mountain last Friday, killing 18 people and leaving hundreds, He added that a special ritual will now be conducted to 'appease the mountain spirit.
Mr Cham the westerners lawyer pleaded with Judge Dean Wayne Dally to just impose a fine followed by deportation he also said the four accused were willing to make a public apology to the people of Malaysia for an act that was committed out of ignorance.
He said that in their home countries the four had more freedom to express their thoughts and ideas and they are influenced very much by the culture, further humility followed for Miss Hawkins when she was the first of the four to be ushered into a caged dock, where, ordered to stand, she peered out through eight bars.
She listened to the charge that she had committed an offence under 294 (A) of the penal code relating to indecency and, like the others who followed her one by one into the dock, pleaded guilty.
But after the outline of the charges had been read to them, they held a whispered conference with their lawyer objecting to a guide's claim that they had called him stupid, ignorant and he should go to hell.
Instead they asked that the statement of fact should show that they were ignorant of the offence they were causing by stripping off. The prosecution agreed to the change
Hawkins appeared in court alongside three other defendants - Canadian siblings Lindsey and Danielle Petersen, and a Dutch man.
Of the 27 backpackers travelling together on the trip, only ten of them – six men and four women - are believed to have undressed. The men stripped naked and the women mostly went topless.
Tribal chief priest Tindarama Aman Sirom Simbuna said the group should be made to pay a 'sogit ', or a fine, and buy 10 buffalo as a sacrifice - or go to jail .
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