German Justice Uncovers Network of Sexual Violence Against Chinese Women
Several men of a Chinese group in Germany have been sentenced. The group was organised through Telegram and systematically drugged, raped and secretly filmed Chinese women.
German Justice Uncovers Network of Sexual Violence Against Chinese Women
Multiple convictions have been handed down in Germany this year against members of an organised group that systematically sexually abused Chinese women. The perpetrators used the messaging app Telegram to plan their crimes.
According to Euronews, the eight members of the group named their chat "German Driving School". There they communicated in encrypted language: the word "fuel" stood for drugs, whilst "car" was the code for their targeted victims. All members of the group, bar one, belonged to the Chinese community.
Earlier this year, a Berlin court sentenced Chinese student Tong Z. to five years and nine months in prison. He was found to have sexually assaulted and secretly filmed eleven Chinese women between 2019 and 2024.
The court established that the defendant recorded his Chinese victims with hidden cameras during intimate moments – whilst they slept, bathed or got dressed. This took place in various apartments within Germany as well as during trips to Poland, Denmark and China.
The investigation revealed that Tong Z. used a spare key to the apartment of his Chinese neighbour in Berlin to enter secretly and install a hidden camera in the bathroom.
The court records also revealed a fully recorded rape from 2024. The victim was a Chinese woman with mild physical and mental disabilities, whom the perpetrator incapacitated with a drink to which he had added sedatives. The victim only learned of the assault when she received a phone call from the police.
During a search of Tong Z.'s apartment after his arrest in November 2024, investigators found condoms, women's underwear, syringes and sleeping pills hidden under the bed.
Investigators came across hard drives containing more than 2 terabytes of recordings, which the defendant had sorted into separate folders – each folder bearing the name of a victim.
German justice imposed a sentence of 14 years in prison on Dapeng Z., a 44-year-old Chinese IT engineer and administrator of the Telegram group, for rape and attempted murder.
Similarly, the court sentenced Jungi Z., a 28-year-old Chinese student, to more than 11 years in prison for similar crimes. The judges concluded that the defendants had deliberately administered life-threatening doses of narcotics to their Chinese victims.
The first leads in the case came to light in November 2024, when German police arrested Dapeng Z. following complaints from several Chinese victims.
During an examination of his devices, investigators discovered the Telegram group, which quickly led to the identification of Tong Z. and other suspects in Germany. It emerged that the men exchanged videos of their attacks and celebrated the crimes of others in the group.
Chat logs showed that Tong Z. and Dapeng Z. exchanged over 2,000 messages on Telegram in less than a year. In the conversations, Tong Z. gave practical advice on recording the attacks and suggested using a GoPro camera alongside the mobile phone in case hands were occupied.
He also wrote that he waited a year or two after recording before using the footage to extort his victims, and mentioned that one of them "cried and pleaded for the recordings to be deleted, but did not think of going to the police".
He described in detail how a Chinese woman cried whilst he forced her to have sex, and said her sobbing "aroused him greatly".
Chinese student Aivi, who lives in Germany, received a phone call from the police early last year asking for help with an investigation concerning a person she had previously known.
Initially she thought the call was a fraud until the investigators showed her naked photos that her former friend Tong Z. had secretly taken whilst she slept.
The 27-year-old recognised herself in the photos without remembering the moment they were taken. Aivi said: "When I saw it, I was speechless... I felt as though I could not breathe. In those photos I looked like a 'wild animal'."
Tong Z. chose a pseudonym on Telegram that reflected his split personality: "God by day, devil by night". This description fits with what the court records revealed about the contrast between his public image and his crimes. In Aivi's memory, her former friend was an "idealistic" young man, tidy, sensitive and compassionate, who enjoyed cooking Sichuan cuisine.
In the courtroom, however, his true identity as a serial perpetrator was revealed – one who recorded and archived his violence with cold calculation. Aivi says she now has difficulty determining whether his earlier gestures of kindness were genuine affection, deliberate hypocrisy or even part of intentional criminal planning.
Tong Z. admitted to all charges before German justice and expressed "profound shame" in a personal statement.
According to the records, the defendant came to Germany in 2015 at the age of 15, moved into student accommodation and subsequently moved between different cities, without completing his studies until his arrest.
He admitted to having spent the last years of his freedom without close friends, confined in front of a screen.
Source: Google News GR — Crime (el)