Chinese student gets life in UK jail for ‘campaign of rape’

LONDON: A Chinese post-graduate student convicted of drugging and raping 10 women in the UK and China and suspected of having attacked more was on Thursday jailed for life by a London court.

Police in London say they have evidence to suggest he may have targeted more than 50 other women. Serial rapist Zhenhao Zou, 28 -- described in court as “calculated and predatory” -- targeted young Chinese women whom he invited to his London flat for drinks or to study before drugging and attacking them.

Zou filmed nine of the rapes with hidden or handheld cameras, but only three of the 10 victims have ever been identified. Sentencing him at Inner London Crown Court, Judge Rosina Cottage said there was “no doubt that you planned and executed a campaign of rape” that had caused “devastating and long term effects”.

To the world he appeared “well to do, ambitious and charming” but this was a mask hiding a “sexual predator”, she said. He treated his victims “callously” as “sex toys” for his own gratification, and his desire to assert “power and control over women” meant that he would be a “risk for an indefinite period”, she added.

Zou, wearing a dark suit and glasses, listened impassively in the dock to the sentence via a translator. He will serve a minimum of 22 years in jail, after accounting for time already spent in custody.