IT WAS sheer desperation, she says, that did her in.

The 29-year-old housewife and mother of two girls had turned to a Chinese medium to solve her marital and financial problems.

She ended up having sex with him for nearly six months because she believed his advice that sex with him was an essential part of the ritual to cleanse her body of evil spirits.

These spirits, she was told, were blocking her path to wealth and happiness.

'I do not know why I believed him. I cannot explain it,' she told The Sunday Times. 'I was willing to do anything to solve my problems.'

Her only consolation, she says, is that she came to her senses and resolved her problems.

But the rogue medium, who cheated her of more than RM20,000 (S$8,700), is still at large.

The housewife's encounter with fraudsters masquerading as spiritual healers is not uncommon in Malaysia. But a spate of cases in the past month has sparked calls from the public and newspapers here for practitioners of traditional spiritual healing like mediums and bomohs to be regulated by the government.

Among the cases: a woman who was duped into having sex 51 times by a self-proclaimed exorcist.

'People are very superstitious. That's why they believe these crooks and conmen,' Datuk Michael Chong, of the Malaysian Chinese Association's (MCA) Public Complaints Bureau, told The Sunday Times.

His office receives an average of two or three appeals a month for help from women tricked by mediums. Most of the cases, he explains, involve women who are having problems with philandering husbands. And in nearly all the cases, the medium ends up persuading the woman to have sex with him on the grounds that it is a necessary ritual.

The MCA said a medium even claimed he was planting an amulet through sex into his client's body.

While Chinese women seek help from mediums who claim to be able to speak with the 'other world' and channel evil spirits to help them, Malays usually seek help from traditional bomohs who practise witchcraft.

Bomohs are frowned upon by Islamic religious authorities but they are tolerated and continue flourishing in Malaysia.

Many of these bomohs claim to be able to cure men of impotence and help jilted women.

Politicians are also known to seek the help of bomohs in enhancing their careers.

Bomohs are known to make incantations and even offer their clients special massages to cure their ailments. As with mediums, some will also try to have their way with women.

'Sometimes a girl will go to the bomoh to ask for a good husband, and the bomoh will suggest that the girl give herself' to him. Bomohs are men and there are bad ones who cast charms so they can get their way with women,' Abdul Hamdi Yunus, a former senior official with the Islamic Development Department, told The Star newspaper recently.

But nabbing these rogue mediums and bomohs is not easy - many victims prefer to suffer in silence because of the humiliation. Those who do talk often do so too late, as the culprits will most likely be on the run.

In some cases, victims are willing to expose the conmen through the media but not to make a criminal complaint.

leslie.lau@excite.com

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This article was first published by The Straits Times on May 21, 2006