A woman who says she was raped by a PhD student while unconscious told a court she felt “angry“ and “ashamed“ but was unsure whether to report the attack. Zhenhao Zou, a 27-year-old Chinese national who was studying in the UK, is accused of plying women with drugs or alcohol in order to rape them, while capturing the alleged attacks on camera as “souvenirs“. One of the alleged victims says she had been out drinking with Zou in Chinatown, central London, and later that evening she woke up to find him having sex with her.
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She told Inner London crown court that she continued to exchange messages with Zou after the attack, as she grappled with what had happened that night. “I didn’t know what happened that night, whether there was a sexual assault or not“, she said, speaking on a videolink from China. “I was struggling with myself - that’s why I felt shame.“. Zou spent two years studying Queen’s University in Belfast from 2017, before signing up for a Masters at University College London (UCL) in 2019 and two years later starting his studies for a PhD in engineering, also at UCL.
He faces charges dating from 2019 to 2023. Around a month after the alleged rape, the woman messaged Zou to say she “thought about giving you a tongue lashing“, and explained to the court: “On that night, I was drunk. I didn’t remember what happened. “I was concerned he might have pictures or videos of me on his phone.“. She continued: “I was angry, because I thought I was sexually assaulted. At the time, I felt very embarrassed.
“My legal concept was quite vague at the time. I didn’t even know how should I start talking about this.“. The woman added that Zou continued trying to message her, and over time she “became more and more angry that he did it to me without my permission“. Zou is on trial accused of 11 counts of rape, 12 charges of possessing an extreme pornographic image, three counts of voyeurism, false imprisonment, and eight counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to supply.
Jurors have heard police recovered a cache of videos on Zou’s electronic devices which are alleged to show him having sex with unconscious women. Two of the women have been identified by police, while eight others remain unidentified. The court has heard Zou denies ever having non-consensual sex, and says the women in the videos either agreed to the activity or were ‘role playing’. The woman giving evidence on Monday said eventually confronted Zou on the phone about that night, and told jurors: “He said to me on the phone that he thought I was conscious at the time.
“But I didn’t agree.“. She and Zou met at a friend's dinner party in September 2021, and she said she “liked him“ and was interested in a “boyfriend-girlfriend“ relationship. But she got the impression Zou “just wanted a sexual relationship“. She invited him with friends to a Chinatown restaurant called Hai Di Lao, and afterwards the group drank Jack Daniel's whisky. She recalled vomiting in the street and the following morning could not locate her bank card and wallet.
The court has heard she claims she lapsed in and out of consciousness as Zou had sex with her at his student apartment. The next day he messaged her to say “I did something wrong“, and she gradually became aware that having sex with someone while they are unconscious is a crime. Months later, she saw a social media post from another Chinese woman, describing Zou having sex with her while she was drunk.
