A Chinese PhD student was found guilty Wednesday in a London court of drugging and raping 10 women in England and China, as police warned there could be more than 50 other victims. <\/p>\n
Zhenhao Zou, 28, was convicted of the attacks between 2019 and 2023 following a monthlong trial at the Inner London Crown Court. He was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offenses relating to one victim. <\/p>\n
After more than 19 hours of deliberations, jurors concluded Zou raped three of the women in London and seven in China. <\/p>\n
Police have only been able to identify two of the victims and said after the verdict that more than 50 other women may have fallen victim to Zou, which would make him one of the worst sex offenders in U.K. history. <\/p>\n
Using hidden or handheld cameras to record the attacks, Zou filmed nine of the attacks as \u201csouvenirs\u201d and often kept a trophy box of women\u2019s belongings. <\/p>\n
Zou, a mechanical engineering student who was doing his PhD at University College London, claimed that the sexual interactions were consensual. He will be sentenced on June 19. <\/p>\n
Jurors, who had to watch footage of the attacks during the trial, were given regular breaks. <\/p>\n
Judge Rosina Cottage described the defendant as a \u201cdangerous and predatory sexual offender\u201d and that his sentence will be \u201cvery long.\u201d <\/p>\n
Zou, who showed no emotion as the verdicts were read out in court, was also convicted of three counts of voyeurism, 10 of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one of false imprisonment and three of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offense, namely butanediol. <\/p>\n
He was cleared of two further counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image and one of possession of MDMA with intent to commit a sexual offense. <\/p>\n
Zou, who also used the name Pakho online, befriended fellow students of Chinese heritage on WeChat and dating apps, before inviting them for drinks and drugging them at his apartments in London or an unknown location in China. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe has done all that he can in these offenses to incapacitate his victims to the point where they could not resist his attack, and in many instances may not even remember what has occurred to them,\u201d said Metropolitan Police Commander Kevin Southworth. <\/p>\n
He thanked the two women who testified against the \u201cparticularly cowardly and deceitful\u201d Zou and said there is evidence that he \u201cmay have potentially attacked as many as 50 other women in the same awful nature.\u201d <\/p>\n
The Met is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force. <\/p>\n
During the trial, a call to police from one of the women led to questions over the quality of the interpreter made available. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a matter of severe regret that the victims didn\u2019t necessarily get that best translation at the time,\u201d Southworth added. <\/p>\n
Zou moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2017 to study mechanical engineering at Queen\u2019s University before heading to UCL in 2019 for a master\u2019s degree and then a PhD. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur thoughts are with the survivors and we wish to pay tribute to the bravery of the women who reported these crimes and gave evidence at the trial,\u201d said UCL\u2019s president, Dr. Michael Spence. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Chinese PhD student was found guilty Wednesday in a London court of drugging and raping 10 women in England and China, as police warned there could be more than 50 other victims. Zhenhao Zou, 28, was convicted of the attacks between 2019 and 2023 following a monthlong trial at the Inner London Crown Court. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13952,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digitaltradecenter.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}