At a glance
• Recruitment firm boss Chao Xu faces prison for sexual offences against women
• Xu is the second Chinese national in recent months to be caught drugging and raping women, in attacks that he filmed
• Xu also targeted women on London’s public transport network
A serial rapist is facing years in prison for drugged women to attack them at his London apartment while taking photos and videos as trophies of his crimes.
Chao Xu, a 33-year-old Chinese national, used networking parties at his Greenwich apartment to draw in potential victims before plying them with a drink laced with date rape drugs.
Xu, who ran his own recruitment business, used his phone to film himself raping and sexually assaulting women that he had rendered unconscious.
After his arrest, Met Police detectives found hidden cameras in Xu’s apartment, secreted inside an air freshener, disguised as a speaker, and inside a digital clock and packet of sanitary towels.
They also recovered videos and images showing he was a prolific upskirter on London’s transport network.
One of the victims told police she had been drinking Xu’s homemade brew of alcohol and Chinese herbs, which he dubbed the ‘Spring of Life’, before she passed and was sexually abused, and believes her drink was laced with drugs.
Another spiking victim woke up as she was being sexually assaulted and filmed by Xu, as he spent more than four-and-a-half hours abusing her.
“The evidence shows the defendant to be a bold and persistent sexual predator whose offending had steadily become more and more serious”, said prosecutor Catherine Farrelly KC.
“He was so emboldened that he was willing to strike anywhere - at his own home address, at his place of work work and in train stations - and in respect of anyone.”
She told Woolwich crown court: “It appears that no woman was safe around him.
“His offending was mainly planned in a very careful way. He would use hidden cameras to record unsuspecting victims, whether by concealing them in his bathroom at home or by covertly using his mobile telephone to record what he was doing and, even more concerningly, he would use drugs - most likely GHB - to incapacitate some of his victims so he could then abuse them over the course of hours, recording what he was doing as some sort of token.”
Xu pleaded guilty in August to four counts of rape, eight charges of assault by penetration, four counts of sexual assault, two counts of administering substances with intent, four counts of voyeurism, and two counts of upskirting.
He is set to be sentenced on Friday, and has been warned to expect a lengthy jail term.
The court heard three of Xu’s victims have been identified by police, but there are videos and images of at least 11 other women who have not yet been identified as victims.
One of the identified women said in a victim impact statement: “I don’t think I will ever be the same person again. I’m afraid I will never be able to forget what that man did to me, and how he stole the person I was.”
Another told the court: “He has become a shadow in my heart.”
The charges he has admitted span three years, from 2022 until his arrest in June this year. But the Met said it believes Xu’s criminal activities may be much more widespread as detectives urged other victims to come forward.
The case is strikingly similar to the recent news about Zhenhao Zou, a PhD student at UCL who is now serving a life sentence for drugging and plying with alcohol ten women so that he could rape them.
Zou, another Chinese national, filmed many of his attacks, and the Met is also appealing for his victims - in London and China - to come forward.
Xu moved to the UK in 2013, he was previously a student at the University of Greenwich, and then went on to establish his own recruitment business.
Ms Farrelly said the first victim in the case is unknown, and was targeted by Xu in February 2022.
Detectives found 37 videos and two images of the half-dressed unconscious victim being sexually abused by Xu, who had also posed her body in different positions.
Xu was linked to the alleged abuse of another woman at his flat in Newington Causeway, south London, because his cat appeared in the slew of images and videos. Xu denied those charges, and the prosecution agreed not to pursue a trial after he pleaded guilty to all other offences.
The court heard Xu had hidden cameras in the bathroom of his Newington Causeway home to capture women as they used the toilet and showered, and he established a similar covert set-up at his new apartment in Greenwich which overlooked the River Thames.
Xu was first charged in June, after a woman who attended a party at one of Xu’s homes reported him to police.
She had drunk some of Xu’s ‘Spring of Life’, and shortly afterwards felt dizzy and needed to lie down.
Even though other people were in the apartment, Xu took his chance to abuse the woman who was slipping in and out of consciousness.
“She remembers the defendant pulling back the cover that was over her and pulling up her dress and trying to take off her tights and her underwear”, said the prosecutor. “She felt dizzy and had no strength, but she tried to pull her dress back down.”
The court heard the woman could feel herself being abused, but “had no strength to fight him off”.
“She felt like she had lost control of her body, and she could not open her eyes. She was lying flat on her back, and she could feel that the defendant was trying to move her onto her side.”
The woman told police Xu became aware that she was awake and pretended to bring her water, but came back instead with a sweet liquid which she suspected was also laced with drugs.
When the woman woke up the next morning, she remembered Xu had been apparently filming and photographing and she confronted him over his behaviour.
Xu, who had a girlfriend, suggested he “might have” touched the woman after having too much to drink, and police were called when he refused to hand over his phone so that images he had taken could be deleted.
Detectives later found 93 photographs and 30 videos of the woman on his phone, revealing the extent of the abuse.
Detectives trawled his home to uncover hidden cameras inside an air freshener and within bathrooms, and a trawl of Xu’s electronic devices revealed his collection of images and videos of women.
He had also made upskirting videos, including at London Bridge station and his WeWork office in Canary Wharf, Woolwich crown court heard.
In one video he sat opposite a woman and filmed up her skirt with his mobile phone.
In another, at London Bridge station, Xu is loitering to select a victim, then follows a woman on to the escalator so that he can film up her skirt.
The Met said its detectives are looking through 6 million messages on Xu’s devices, but already “believe the scale of his offending could be even bigger and are making a direct appeal for any victim-survivors who have not yet been identified to come forward and seek specialist support”.
“Xu is a calculated prolific sex offender, who has preyed on unsuspecting women using cowardly methods - administering drugs to rape, sexually assault and take intimate images without consent” said Detective Chief Inspector Lewis Sanderson.
“Our investigation is ongoing and we continue examine the large amount of evidence we have collected, which will help identify any further potential victim-survivors.
“We’re also asking anyone who has any information about Xu or believes they may have been a victim, to come forward – you will be listened to. I want to reassure anyone impacted that you are not alone and can seek specialist support and guidance, not only from the police, but also from independent charities and services.”
Suzanne Crane, of the Crown Prosecution Service, added that Xu poses “a serious danger to women”.
“The evidence included disturbing images and videos recovered from Xu’s phone, hidden cameras, and substances commonly used to spike drinks found at his home.
“This overwhelming evidence led to his guilty pleas today.”
Scotland Yard has set up contact portals in English, Mandarin, and Cantonese for potential victims to come forward.
English - https://mipp.police.uk/operation/01MPS25Y21-PO1
Mandarin - https://mipp.police.uk/operation/01MPS25Y21-PO2
Cantonese - https://mipp.police.uk/operation/01MPS25Y21-PO3
