Son of Former SF Police Chief Accused By Multiple Women Of Sexual Assault

Son of Former SF Police Chief Accused By Multiple Women Of Sexual Assault
Editorial Staff
May 15, 2018
Editor’s Note: The following post includes graphic descriptions of sexual assault.
Several women have come forward accusing the son of a former San Francisco police chief of sexual assault.
Nicholas Lau
On May 7, Olivia Chang, a current student at UCI, took to Facebook to accuse Nicholas Lau, known socially as Nick, of sexual assault. Lau has since denied the claims calling them “false news” on his now-deactivated Twitter account.
Chang’s Facebook post, including screen shots of messages and texts, were featured on Twitter by user @xrxsvn, a friend of Chang, and quickly went viral with close to 5,000 retweets as of this writing.
Chang, herself one of the alleged victims, claimed on Facebook that she and a friend were sexually assaulted at TIME Nightclub in Costa Mesa, California the weekend before.
“Who knew someone would be so smart and decide to sexually assault her and I by grabbing her ass and pulling my top to reveal my boobs.
“My friends and I gave this person almost a day now to give us an explanation or an apology but he decides to dodge all of our messages. We know you saw it because you just posted a status like five minutes ago.”
Lau, whose Facebook profile has been deactivated, commented on one of Chang’s posts, writing “what some girls will do for attention.”
In a follow-up tweet, @xrxsvn showed a screenshot of a tweet from Lau denying the claims and threatening to take legal action, but others have started to come forward to reveal other alleged assaults involving Lau.
@xrxsvn also claimed that Lau “tries to use DJs like @iamtheELEPHANTE and @RLGRIME to lure girls backstage with him.”
Chang’s exposé has garnered thousands of likes and retweets with many calling for justice. Another user shared testimonies of three other women allegedly victimized by Lau:
User @DAPHTHESHAFT also shared a conversation with Lau from 2014, adding “people don’t change.”
Amber Huynh, another current UCI student, revealed an alleged incident of sexual harassment involving Lau to NextShark:

“I met Nick Lau during the fall quarter of the 2015-2016 school year. I was a first year at UCI and attended a college party with a friend. He was intoxicated and flirted with me but I expressed my disinterest. Later in the night he slapped my behind while laughing. I told him not to touch me. He later groped my behind while walking past me. When I confronted him again he blamed it on the ‘tight space’ between the people in the house, but I knew it was just a lame attempt to make physical contact. I avoided him the rest of the night and went home. I mostly saw him during social gatherings/parties, most of which consisted of him drinking and being obnoxious. He had no respect for personal space as he did the same with other girls. I can’t remember all the details of when and where, but he slapped my butt again one night and after telling him more than once to stop, I punched him and told him to ‘f*** off.’ He then remembered me as ‘the girl who punched him,’ and would jokingly refer to it whenever he saw me to anyone around us. He’d tell his friends, ‘Did you know she punched me once?’ and I would reply with ‘you know why.’ And he would laugh about it as if it were funny — it wasn’t. My experience with Nick is just like any other with people I consider perverts, douchebags, and assholes. I take it with a grain of salt because it happens all the time, but with recent allegations involving Nick (I’ve been in contact with numerous people who he’s also sexually harassed) some cases are far more severe than mine and should not be swept under the rug. I share my experience in hopes that it truly reflects how horrible of a person Nick is, as it is only a piece of a larger puzzle involving other victims’ stories.”

Another woman, Loyce Chin, revealed to NextShark a more serious case where she alleges Lau took advantage of her when she was drunk and raped her.
Chin had known Lau for less than a week, having been introduced through mutual friends to purchase a ticket for a show in April 2017. By all her accounts, she had no reason to distrust Lau and her friends described him as a “cool guy.”  
She went to the show but did not get a chance to meet Lau then. They agreed meet and hang out days later.

“He picked me up early in the afternoon, and we went out to eat and run errands, and then ended up at Costco. At Costco, he would slap/grab my butt a couple times but I didn’t want to seem like I was making a big deal so I just laughed it off.

While at Costco we stopped by the alcohol aisle and I mentioned that I didn’t drink at the party the previous night, so I wouldn’t mind drinking that day, but I was also tired from pulling an all nighters. Once we got back to his house afterwards, he offered me vodka (Apple Ciroc) and cranberry juice. He kept egging me on, saying that I’d bragged that I knew how to drink but I was only taking small swigs or drinking slowly.

I wanted to seem cooler since he kept flexing his relationships with these industry people that I wanted to work with/for — I just went along with it.

I was sitting on his bed and super exhausted at that point, and he was playing Overwatch. Things got really blurry from there but I remember being bored and on the verge of blacking out so I kept asking him to talk to me or something.

I only remember bits and pieces after — I think he got in bed with me and put on Family Guy. Then he, started cuddling me or something, and I vaguely remember a conversation about my boobs.

Everything from there is black. I don’t remember anything at all. I just know I was drunk and I fell asleep at some point.

My bra was off but my clothes were on.

I don’t remember the state of my shorts.

I have fading details here and there.

I don’t even remember waking up, just me screaming at him. According to him, I’d just fallen asleep and he’d woken me up because he needed to go do something and wanted me to go home. I don’t remember why I was just totally hysterical and trying to fight him while he grabbed my arm.

When I accused him of raping me, he just said he was drunk too and I came onto him and that I was a crazy bitch. Then he continued to say that that was the reason why certain industry people (aforementioned) would never care for me and that if I ever talked about this incident that I might as well give up all of those friends and opportunities.

I fled his house. I only realized my bra was off because he threw it at me at that time. His housemate was a bystander, and I was still nearly blackout drunk and hysterical. I’m pretty sure Nick called my best friend to come get me right before I fled, saying that I was crazy at that point too.

I still don’t remember very much at this point since I was still drunk, but I called the police then. Details got mixed up at the time and I declined for a further investigation, believing everyone’s words that maybe because I was drunk, it wasn’t Nick’s fault.

Over the following days, the trauma of the ordeal drove Chin to depression. She attempted to commit suicide by slitting her wrists while in a friend’s bathroom. Several days passed until she was “functioning like a normal person again,” but she still blamed herself for everything. Unfortunately for Chin, it wasn’t the end.

“Roughly a week to ten days after the rape, I was using the restroom when a used condom fell out of me. The only person it could’ve belonged to was Nick. I was so horrified I immediately disposed of it, but to this day I regret denying an investigation and rape kit because that would’ve put him in jail.”

Chin never filed an official police report for the rape, but she believes her 911 call for the rape and records of the police and ambulance that were sent to her in response must exist. Chin is meeting with her lawyer to discuss retrieving those records.
Chin continued:

“It’s been rough but I’m so grateful that I can speak about this now.

This is the first time I’ve  spoken on this in full. I always replayed the incident to myself, wondering what I could’ve done differently or where it all went wrong.

That’s a common misconception that a lot of people bought into, including me: Nick isn’t popular, hes well known and liked at a surface level because of his self-inflated connections.

He buys into DJs favor by giving them Adidas or acting like he’s more familiar with those DJs friends. He basically social climbs his connections to the industry.

Many people liked or tolerated him because they trusted the judgement of other people — and since the music industry is so male-dominated, many of them either didn’t see Nick’s creepy behavior, brushed it off as him just flirting, or straight up ignored it because they weren’t involved, didn’t want to cause drama, or didn’t have proof themselves.

I had one friend who told me that Nick had assaulted their friend too when I confided in him about the rape, and yet they continued to maintain cordial.

Nobody wanted to be the whistleblower because nobody knew who was going to take whose side. Thanks to Olivia we all know everyone was actually just waiting on each other.”

Responding to the initial accusations, Lau wrote on his personal Facebook account (now deactivated) that “everyone makes mistakes” and that he has “actively been changing for the better as a person.” 
Chang also called for help in contacting Adidas, which apparently employs Lau in a Costa Mesa store.
Lau’s Facebook profile is currently inaccessible.
Several of the women on Twitter included that Nicholas Lau is the son of a former Chief of Police of San Francisco, Fred Lau.
Nicholas lau fred lau
Image via Wikimedia Commons / (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Lau’s Twitter account, which has been deactivated, used a family photo from his graduation from UCI, where adults believed to be his father and mother are both present in the picture.
nicholas lau fred lau
NextShark called TIME Nightclub which confirmed that Nicholas Lau is banned from the premises indefinitely. Other venues have also since banned Lau from attending over the sexual assault allegations while some of his supposed DJ friends also started speaking out against him.
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The Yelp page for the Adidas Originals store in South Coast Mall in Costa Mesa where Lau works has since received a number of 1-star reviews attributed to his employment there.
NextShark called the Adidas store in Costa Mesa, California where Lau states he has been employed since April 2016 on his Linkedin profile. (The profile itself was accessible up until the past weekend. The information on the page seems to have been altered since then to read as the profile of a “Nelson LeMao.” A screen shot of his original LinkedIn profile can be viewed below.)
nicholas lau
A man identifying as the manager of the Adidas store (but declined to give us his name) said, “Thank you for contacting Adidas. I’m not at liberty to comment on the matter.” A request for comment via email and calls to Adidas’ corporate communications and public relations contacts in the U.S. have been met with silence.
NextShark reached out to the TSA regional spokesperson for California via phone and email in an attempt to contact Nick Lau’s father, Fred Lau, who now works as the Federal Security Director at San Francisco International Airport, for a comment. A TSA regional spokesperson referred NextShark to local law enforcement because the allegations don’t directly involve TSA.
NextShark reached out to the Department of Homeland Security Asian American Pacific Islander Network, of which Fred Lau is an Advisory Board member, via email in an attempt to collect a comment from him on the allegations. NextShark has not yet received a response. We will update the story as it develops.
NextShark reached out to the University of California, Irvine for comment on the matter as it involved current UCI students. Lau is also an alumni of university. We have yet to receive a response.
NextShark also obtained a personal cell phone number attributed to the Lau family from public records. We called the number on Friday May 11 2018 which rang and eventually went to voicemail. A voice message requesting a comment was left along with contact information, but we have not received a response.
If you have any information regarding this story, please email [email protected].
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