A Chinese PhD student found guilty of drugging and raping 10 women has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 24 years.
Warning: This article contains details of sexual offences
Zhenhao Zou, 28, was convicted of multiple sexual assaults on women in the UK and China in March, where he used drugs to incapacitate his victims before raping them.
The trial at Inner London Crown Court heard how he used the drug butanediol to render his victims unconscious, and how he used hidden cameras to record nine of his assaults.
Jurors found him guilty of 11 counts of rape against 10 women between 2019 and 2023. Three of these women were raped in London and seven in China.
Zou was sentenced to 24 years in prison, but because of time served, he will serve at least 22 years and 227 days before eligible for parole.
Only two of his victims were identified during the trial. Since Zou’s conviction, police have now identified one of the other victims involved in this case.
The prosecution said Zou embarked on a “campaign of offending of the utmost gravity”.
He targeted young Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study before he drugged and assaulted them.
Zou used hidden cameras or his mobile phone to record the attacks, keeping the footage and sometimes the women’s belongings as souvenirs.
Officers discovered nearly 1,300 videos in one of the biggest cases the Met’s digital forensics lab has ever dealt with.
The rape material the jury had to watch was so graphic that jurors have been excused from jury service for two decades.
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During the sentencing hearing, the victim impact statements of three women were read out.
The first said she’d woken up to find the former PhD student raping her in 2021. She said it happened while “unconscious” after being out drinking for four or five hours with friends in London’s Chinatown.
The woman said: “That moment will clearly stay in my mind forever. As a result, I now experience severe physical and psychological distress. The memories trigger migraines, physical pain in the places he violated, and an overwhelming urge to scrub myself clean.
“To this day, I struggle to trust anyone. I avoid new friendships, trapped in the aftermath of what he did.”
The second victim was raped while “drunk and unconscious” at Zou’s flat in London’s Elephant and Castle in May 2023. Zou filmed the attack and took intimate images without her knowledge using a small camera by the bed.
“No matter what I did, I could not sleep; whenever I closed my eyes, the events of what happened to me kept replaying in my mind,” she said in her statement, outlining her “mental agony and pain”.
“I am not sure anything will help what I have gone through. The only thing I want him to know is that if he does this again, I will do everything in my power to send him back to prison.”
The third woman was unidentified during the trial until she came forward as part of the police appeal. This woman was raped at an unknown location in China, and Zou filmed her rape while she was unconscious.
She told the court: “When I recently saw that face again in the news reports, my trembling body reacted faster than my conscious mind. Now insomnia and anxiety rage anew.
“Reliving this feels like I’m being forced to watch my past self endure repeated violations.”
Zou is currently at the heart of the UK’s largest rape investigation. Following Zou’s conviction, investigators shared that they believed Zou’s offending was on a much larger scale than the 11 rape convictions.
Metropolitan Police detectives believe Zou could be the “most substantial and prolific offender we’ve come across in recent times”.
Officers believe more than 50 other women could also be victims of Zou, which would make him one of the worst sex offenders the UK has ever seen.
Investigators have further video material showing unidentified women being attacked, and police believe around 25 of those incidents happened in the UK and 25 in China.
An international appeal was launched for these women to come forward, resulting in 24 reporting that they may have been raped by Zou.
It’s understood that some of these women form part of the 50 additional women that police say have also been targeted by the former University College London student.
Police are particularly keen to hear from women from the Chinese student community who may have met Zou and were living in and around London between 2019 and 2024.
Following the sentencing, the Metropolitan Police said the reports made by 24 women “continue to be investigated thoroughly by a dedicated team of officers” and the force “will continue to liaise with the Crown Prosecution Service around potential future charges”.
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Commander Kevin Southworth said: “First and foremost, our thoughts have always been with the courageous victim-survivors of Zou’s heinous and predatory crimes.”
He added: “I hope the fact Zou can no longer harm others serves as a small amount of comfort to the women who have suffered immeasurably.
“I would also like to take this opportunity to stress that our investigation remains open and we continue to appeal to anyone who may think they have been a victim of Zou. Please come forward and speak with our team – we will treat you with empathy, kindness and respect.”
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Zou first moved to Belfast in 2017 to study mechanical engineering at Queen’s University before moving to London in 2019.
He then studied for a Master’s degree at University College London from 2019 to 2021, followed by a PhD at the same university from 2021.
Police say “investigators have not received any reports from women who met Zou while he was living in Belfast but remain in contact with Police Service Northern Ireland”, but that anyone with concerns should come forward.
