Lawyer gets 3-month suspension after admitting to assaulting wife and young daughter

A B.C. lawyer who admitted to punching and kicking his wife, intimidating her with stories about a notorious spousal murder case, and hitting his young daughter with a weapon has been suspended from practice for three months.

Zao (Aidan) Huang of Surrey has acknowledged his misconduct and agreed to be disciplined, according to a consent agreement with the Law Society of B.C. posted online this week.

The agreement says Huang was criminally charged in August 2020 with two counts of assault and one count of uttering threats against his wife, as well as one count of assault with a weapon against his daughter. However, those charges were withdrawn earlier this year.

After he was charged, Huang participated in therapy and "explained that, through counselling, he has realized the impact of his mistakes, and has expressed his remorse to [his wife] and to his family," the agreement says.

It goes on to say that Huang was also arrested in 2019 on allegations of assault and uttering threats, but no charges were laid.

Nonetheless, Huang has admitted to a long list of violence and threats against his family members between October 2019 and May 2021, the agreement says.

That includes instances of threatening his wife with bodily harm, and later telling her about a famous case in China where a husband had murdered his wife "in order to intimidate her," according to the agreement.

He also admitted to punching his wife in the face and the back of the head multiple times, kicking her in the leg in one incident, and kicking her again in another.

Huang acknowledged striking his daughter with a "weapon or imitation weapon" in June 2020, the agreement says. Born in 2014, she would have been five or six years old at the time.

Huang's three-month suspension begins on Nov. 1.