LONDON — A Chinese PhD student has been found guilty by a court in London of drugging and raping 10 women in England and China.
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Zhenhao Zou, 28, was convicted of the attacks between 2019 and 2023 following a monthlong trial at Inner London Crown Court.
Jurors found Zou, a mechanical engineering student who was doing his PhD at University College London, raped three of the women in London, and seven in China.
Police have only been able to identify two of the victims.
He filmed nine of the attacks as “souvenirs” and kept a trophy box of women’s belongings. Jurors were given regular breaks as the troubling footage was shown to them.
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 offence, namely butanediol.
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 offence.
Prosecutors said Zou, who denied the charges, appeared to be “a smart and charming young man,” but he was in fact “a persistent sexual predator, a voyeur and a rapist.”
Zou, who also used the name Pakho online, befriended fellow Chinese students on WeChat and dating apps, before inviting them for drinks and drugging them at his flats in London or an unknown location in China.
The student first moved to Belfast in 2017 to study mechanical engineering at Queen’s University before heading to London in 2019 to do a master’s degree and then a PhD at UCL.
Zou will be sentenced on June 19.