PhD student ‘raped 10 women after plying them with alcohol or drugs’

A PhD student is accused of drugging and raping 10 women over a period of four years, a court has heard.

Zhenhao Zou, 27, a Chinese national, allegedly drugged or pressured the women to drink alcohol before sexually assaulting them.

The prosecution alleged that Zou often filmed himself doing so and would keep the videos as ‘souvenirs’.

Zou is accused of raping the women between September 2019 and May 2023 and appeared at Inner London Crown Court.

Multiple videos were found on his phone of unconscious women when he was arrested after one reported him to police.

Catherine Farrelly KC opened the case and said: ‘To the outside world, he undoubtedly presents as a smart and charming young man.

‘However, as you know from the indictment in this case, the document which contains 35 separate criminal allegations against him, the prosecution say that he is also a persistent sexual predator; a voyeur and a rapist.

‘The prosecution case at this trial is that he would meet women, he would stupefy them, either with drink or drugs, and, once they were significantly under the influence of those drinks or drugs, he would then rape them.

‘Often, he would record himself doing so and during this trial, you will be shown several recordings which the prosecution says are the defendant’s souvenirs of many rapes that he had committed.

‘Items that he kept for his own private sexual gratification so that he could watch, at his leisure, his rapes of these women, who he had rendered often unconscious and totally vulnerable to his will.’

The first woman to make an allegation against Zou told police in May 2023.

She said she had been raped after she was not allowed to leave his flat in Elephant and Castle.

She did not pursue the allegation but investigators found a social media post in February 2024 where she gave her account of what happened.

The victim told detectives that she first went to Zou’s flat to study and nothing happened.

A few days later on May 18, 2023, Zou is alleged to have invited her to his friend’s flat for a drink and then back to his apartment.

They were drinking wine together but the victim became uncomfortable and indicated she wanted to leave.

While she was crying on the floor trying to get away, Zou told a friend who entered the flat that the victim was too drunk to walk.

It is claimed he paid the victim to say and when she tried to escape, he dragged her back in and forced her to drink a large glass of vodka.

Ms Farrelly said: ‘She told him that she didn’t want the vodka and she just wanted to leave but he told her that she had to stay.’

While she was unconscious, the victim says she was raped by Zou.

The second victim claims she had consensual sex with Zou once in September 2021.

She found herself alone in a street with him a month later in Chinatown and remembers being sick.

She alleges that Zou raped her at his flat and told him to stop before she lost consciousness.

A video shown to the court showed Zou allegedly raping a woman called Female A despite her saying: ‘I really don’t want… I beg you, don’t do this.’

In the video he could be heard telling the victim the sound insulation in his bedroom is ‘very good’.

Zou faces trial for 11 counts of rape against the women as well as three counts of voyeurism, 12 of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one of false imprisonment and eight of possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply.

These substances are alleged to be MDMA, butanediol, ketamine and alprazolam.

There are video recordings relating to nine of the 10 women it is claimed which Zou is charged with possessing extreme pornographic images, along with two other recordings in which the male involved cannot be identified.

Zou, who moved to Belfast from China in 2017 to study at Queen’s University before moving to London in 2019 to do a master’s degree and then a PhD at UCL, denies all the charges.

He was sat in the dock dressed in a navy blue suit, white shirt and navy blue tie as he heard the prosecution outline the case.

Zou will argue the sexual interactions were consensual, that alcohol was drank consensually, and that some footage filmed involved role play.

The trial continues.

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