A Chinese doctoral student was convicted on Wednesday in a drug court in London and rape 10 women in England and China, since the police warned that there could be more than 50 victims.
Zhenhao Zou, 28, was convicted of the attacks between 2019 and 2023 after a one -month trial in the crown court in the interior of London. He was convicted of 11 charges of rape, with two of the crimes related to a victim.
After more than 19 hours of deliberations, the jury concluded that Zou violated three of the women in London and seven in China.
Police have only been able to identify two of the victims and said after the verdict that more than 50 women may have been victims of Zou, which would make him one of the worst sexual criminals in the history of the United Kingdom.
Using hidden or hand cameras to record the attacks, Zou filmed nine of the attacks as “memories” often maintained a trophy box of women’s belongings.
Zou, a mechanical engineering student who was doing his doctorate at the University College London, said the sexual interactions were consensual. He will be sentenced on June 19.
The jurors, who had images of the attacks during the trial, received regular breaks.
Judge Rosina Cottage described the defendant as a “dangerous and predatory sexual offender” and that her sentence will be “very long.”
Zou, who did not show emotion when the verdicts were read in the Court, was also convicted of three voyeurism positions, 10 possession of an extreme pornographic image, one of false imprisonment and three of possession of a controlled drug with the intention of committing a sexual crime, namely, Butanediol.
He was authorized of two additional positions of possession of an extreme pornographic image and one of possession of MDMA with the intention of committing a sexual crime.
Zou, who also used the name Pakho online, became friends with Chinese heritage partners in Wechat and Dating applications, before inviting them to drink drinks and drug them in their apartments in London or in an unknown place in China.
“He has done everything he can in these crimes to incapacitate his victims to the point that they could not resist their attack, and in many cases not even remember what has happened to them,” said Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth.
He thanked the two women who testified against the zou “particularly cowardly and misleading” and said there is evidence that “he could have attacked up to 50 other women in the same horrible nature.”
The police are appealing to anyone who thinks that Zou may have been attacked to contact the force.
During the trial, a call to the police of one of the women led to questions about the quality of the interpreter made available.
“It is a severe repentance that the victims did not necessarily obtain that best translation at that time,” Southworth added.
Zou moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 2017 to study mechanical engineering at Queen University before heading to UCL in 2019 to obtain a master’s degree and then a doctorate.
“Our thoughts are with the survivors and we want to pay tribute to the courage of the women who reported these crimes and gave evidence in the trial,” said UCL president, Dr. Michael Spence.
