Zhenhao Zou Belfast: Consultant forensic psychologist explains why sexual predators offend - and suggest how PSNI investigate Zou's time at Queens University Belfast (QUB)
A consultant forensic psychologist has given her opinion on why offenders like sexual predator Zhenhao Zou commit such crimes - and how the PSNI might investigate his time in Belfast.
Zhenhao Zou, 28, a University College London Phd student, was convicted at Inner London Crown Court this week of drugging and raping 10 women in London and China.
He studied mechanical engineering at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) from 2017-2019 before moving to London.
QUB is liaising with the Metropolitan Police although at this time there is no evidence he committed any crimes while in NI.
Police believe more than 50 other women may have fallen prey to the student, which would make him one of the worst sex offenders the UK has seen.
However a consultant forensic psychologist has suggested that it is plausible that he may have been offending while in Belfast.
Dr Vicky Thakordas-Desai, who is based in the west midlands of England, has worked with violent and sexual offenders for 23 years.
"Zou developed a modus operandi that has enabled him to feel powerful, using the drugs as a means of gaining the power that he needed to fulfill his own sexual gratification - that was his aim," she told the News Letter.
He downloaded an instruction guide on how to drug and rape women when he was at home in China during the Covid-19 pandemic in November 2020 - after he had left NI.
"So I wonder whether at the time of COVID he was struggling with some level of emotional and social inadequacy and isolation."
She also questions what his sexual and dysfunctional attitudes and beliefs might have been when living in Belfast.
"I would say it would have been bubbling away in the background, and that could have manifested itself in certain other types of offending, such as voyeurism - using spy cameras in student accomodation for example - or taking items that belonged to other females and extreme use of pornography."
She is interested to know whether, as in London, he was tutoring any young women in Belfast and whether bodies assisting with victims of sexual assault at in Belfast at that time might have any relevant records of assaults.
It would also be important to interview any other close associates that he had at that time, and all female Chinese students at QUB during his time there.
Factors which might push sex offenders towards such crimes, she said, can be family dysfunction in childhood and even sexual abuse.
Social awkwardness with the opposite sex could also be a factor - which Zou could have overcome to some extent with drugs or alcohol.
Such offenders are likely to always be a risk to the public, she says.
If released, they must be always be monitored for red flags which indicate if they are in danger of offending once again.
At the PSNI Policing Board on Thursday, Chief Constable Jon Boutcher appealed for anyone to come forward who may have any concerns about Zoe and may have known him.
“The issue is that many of the victims do not know that they are victims," he said.
“I would appeal to anybody who met him or in any way was alone with him … that they come forward and speak to us."