A prostitute was hospitalized after pulling a condom off her client and swallowing it whole to avoid being arrested.
Dang, a 48-year-old Vietnamese woman, denied sex work when police raided the ‘health spa’ in Taichung City, Taiwan, on March 14 at 9pm.
But she soon became short of breath and critically dehydrated, and was rushed to hospital, where an x-ray revealed a shadow inside her digestive tract that police believed the rubber sheath.
Dang was found guilty of perjury and jailed for two months, but escaped further charges of hiding evidence because doctors said the condom was ‘never found’.
An x-ray (pictured) showed a shadow in Dang’s digestive tract, which police believed to be the condom
According to local media, Dang and her client, identified only as Yao, were both arrested when they were found together in a room on the first floor.
They were interviewed separately, and while Dang denied prostitution, Yao admitted to officers that they were in the middle of having sex.
He told the interrogators that as soon as Dang heard police approaching, she pulled off the condom and swallowed it whole.
However, though police could not find the condom, they found the condom wrapper, so continued to raid the room. It then became clear that Dang was dehydrated, constantly asking for more water.
The officers then escorted her to Jen-Ai Hospital where a scan revealed the shadow that was deemed to be incriminating.
While there are many published papers on the health impact of swallowing condoms, most of them focus on drug mules, and therefore on the contents of the condoms.
However, a 2011 study published in the Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal warned the latex can require surgery to remove since it could obstruct vital organs and digestive pathways if it does not pass through the system.
In fact, in 2016, a study published in the Journal of Medical Reports described the case of a 26-year-old woman in Cameroon who got appendicitis two weeks after swallowing a condom whole during oral sex with her boyfriend.
After surgery, the surgeons found pieces of the condom in her appendix.