Update: PhD student who drugged and r@ped 10 women asked to be chemically castrated in bid to avoid jail time

A Chinese PhD student who drugged and r@ped 10 women asked to be chemically castrated in an attempt to avoid going to prison. 

Zhenhao Zou, 28, was yesterday jailed for a minimum of 22 years for the vile attacks during his time studying at University College, London.

Following his conviction in March, detectives revealed they had evidence relating to suspected attacks on another 50 women in the UK and China after uncovering a sickening collection of trophy videos kept by the engineering PhD student as a souvenir.

Now a further 24 victims have come forward saying they were raped by Zou while he was studying in the UK. The fiend filmed some of his victims helpless and stupefied in sick home videos that he kept of his attacks.

Inner London Crown Court heard that Zou had offered to be chemically castrated to avoid a life sentence.

But Judge Rosina Cottage said he would always be a risk to the public because of his ‘s£xual interest’ in ‘asserting power and control over women’, adding that the victims were just ‘pieces in an elaborate game’.

Jailing him for life, she said: ‘The charming mask hid the fact that you are also a sexual predator.’

Chemical castration of paedophiles and other sex offenders is currently being piloted in southwest England and includes taking two drugs, one to limit s£xual thoughts and the other to reduce testosterone and limit libido.

Chemical castration is voluntary in Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark, and some sex offenders actively seek it out. 

Victims told yesterday how they were ‘haunted’ by what Zou had done to them as a judge said he had treated unconscious women like ‘s£x toys’ for his own pleasure. 

The son of a wealthy Chinese Communist Party official and industrialist, Zou stalked student bars, accommodation and online dating apps looking for victims, plying unsuspecting women with drinks laced with drugs.

He lured the women back to his lavish student apartment in East London with the promise of a party or help with studies, before stupefying them with drink and drugs until they fell unconscious, enabling him to film his sickening attacks on hidden bedroom spy cameras.

One victim, whom Zou had described as ‘the perfect girlfriend choice’, recalled waking in a strange room after going to a drinking party in 2021: ‘I experienced for the first time a loss of consciousness.

‘I opened my eyes for a few seconds during the sexual assault in his room, he was thrusting violently against my body. I was completely powerless and could only use all my strength to demand he stop.

‘Although I lost consciousness just moments later, his face in that moment will clearly stay in my mind forever.’

She later awoke naked lying next to him: ‘Panic surged through me-everything about the room I was in was unfamiliar and I had no memory of how I got there.

‘That night, it was as if the world had vanished from my life for hours.

‘Everything in this world- my memories, time, even my own body- no longer felt like mine. Overwhelmed by fear, my only thought was to escape.

‘Stumbling out of his room, I found myself in a completely unknown place. I didn’t know where I was or how to leave. The memories of that night were fragmented- I only recall wandering like a trapped animal, desperately searching for an exit.

‘For over a week afterward, I locked myself in my bathroom, consumed by terror, confusion, anger, and shame.’

She added: ‘I still can’t read news about him or see his photo without feeling sick…

‘To this day, I struggle to trust anyone. I avoid new friendships, trapped in the aftermath of what he did.

‘Words will never fully convey the depth of this wound. But one thing is certain: what happened that night is etched into my soul forever. His face, his expression-they will never leave me.

‘I will never forgive him.’