British police were blocked from investigating in China after a London university PhD student was accused of being a serial rapist, a court has heard.
Zhenhao Zou, 27, is accused of raping ten women across four years between September 2019 and May 2023, when the victims were allegedly unconscious or semi-conscious through drink or drugs.
It is said Zou filmed the attacks on the women which he collected as “souvenirs“, and detectives found a cache of drugs – including MDMA, Ketamine, and Xanax – after his arrest.
Prosecutors have alleged Zou, a Chinese national, carried out attacks in London and China. Two of the alleged victims have given evidence at Inner London crown court, telling jurors they were raped by Zou at his student accommodation in the UK.
But the remaining eight rape allegations rest on videos of the alleged attacks found on Zou’s devices, showing incidents which are believed to have taken place in China. The women involved have not yet been unidentified.
Metropolitan Police Detective Constable Jack Woods told the court that officers had not been able to pursue the investigation in China, where Zou is understood to have lived before taking up his studies in 2017.
“You have not had the ability to investigate as far as China“, said prosecutor Catherine Farrelly KC, adding that the investigation was “limited to England and Wales.“
She said that while one of the alleged victims gave evidence on a videolink from China, British police “were never granted permission to go and investigate in China“.
DC Woods replied: “Yes, that’s correct.“
Asked on Friday if the Chinese authorities are investigating information that has emerged in the case, the officer replied: “I can’t say.“
Jurors have been told Zou is expected to start giving evidence in his defence on Monday morning.
The court has heard he says the videos all feature consensual sexual activity, and he will argue that some of the women involved were ‘role playing’.
Zou spent two years studying Queen’s University in Belfast from 2017, before signing up for a Masters in Mechanical Engineering at University College London (UCL) in 2019 and two years later starting his studies for a PhD.
The court has heard Zou spent two months in China between July and September 2019, he returned for a spell between March 2020 to July 2021, and was in China from July 2022 to March 2023. He also returned to the country for a few weeks before his arrest in January 2024.
Prosecutor Catherine Farrelly KC said Zou, a Chinese national, is accused of being “a persistent sexual predator, a voyeur and a rapist“.
“To the outside world, he undoubtedly presents as a smart and charming young man“, said Ms Farrelly. “The prosecution says 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 and stupefy them, either with drugs or with alcohol, and, once they were significantly under the influence of drink or drugs, he would rape them.
“Often, he would record himself doing so and you will be shown several recordings during this trial 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 unconscious and totally vulnerable to his will.“
Zou, of Churchyard Row in Southwark, denies 11 counts of rape, 12 charges of possessing an extreme pornographic image, three counts of voyeurism, false imprisonment, and eight counts involving drug possession, of committing an offence with intent to commit a sexual offence.
Judge Rosina Cottage KC explained to the jury that previous charges of possession of drugs with intent to supply had been dropped against Zou for a technical legal reason, to be replaced with the new offence, alleging that he possessed drugs “with intent to commit rape“.
The trial continues.
