Latest news with #ElephantCastle
The Independent
2 days ago
- The Independent
Chinese student who raped and drugged 10 women jailed for life
A Chinese PhD student who drugged and raped 10 women in London and China has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 24 years. Zhenhao Zou, 28, kept a trophy box of women's belongings and filmed nine of the rapes on women as they lost consciousness. Three of the 10 victims have been identified, prosecutors say, but Metropolitan Police detectives fear he could have targeted dozens more women. Sentencing Zou at Inner London Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Rosina Cottage told him he would serve 22 years and 227 days before he was eligible for parole, taking into account time spent on remand. The judge said the defendant is a 'very bright young man' who used a manipulative 'charming mask' to hide that he is a 'sexual predator'. She said that Zou 'planned and executed a campaign of rape', treating the women 'callously' and as 'sex toys' for his own pleasure, which had 'devastating and long-term effects'. The judge told the court that Zou has a 'sexual interest' in 'asserting power and control over women', adding that the victims were 'pieces in an elaborate game' for the defendant, who has 'no understanding of the meaning of consent'. After a month-long trial, Zou, who was most recently living in Elephant and Castle, south-east London, was found guilty of raping three women in London and another seven in China between September 2019 and May 2023. He was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim. Zou was also convicted of three counts of voyeurism, 10 of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one of false imprisonment and three of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol. Prosecutors said Zou appeared to be 'a smart and charming young man', but was in fact 'a persistent sexual predator, a voyeur and a rapist'. He comes from a wealthy family, affording a Rolex, a wardrobe of designer clothes, cosmetic procedures such as a hair transplant and facial surgery, and thousands in monthly rent while living in London as an international engineering student. Zou, who also used the name Pakho online, befriended fellow Chinese students on WeChat and dating apps before inviting them for drinks and drugging them at his flats in London or an unknown location in China. The student first moved to Belfast in 2017 to study mechanical engineering at Queen's University before heading to London in 2019 to do a master's degree and then a PhD at University College London (UCL). His crimes began to be uncovered in November 2023, when a woman went to police to allege she had been attacked by Zou. There was not enough evidence to bring a criminal charge over the claim, but when Zou's phone was seized officers found disturbing videos of him raping unconscious women, and pipettes and sedating drugs were discovered in his flat. One of the identified women was raped after Zou pushed her to drink excessive amounts of alcohol and would not let her leave his flat in Elephant and Castle in May 2023. She said in her victim impact statement: 'I have lost faith in human beings, I have no trust in others. Before this incident, I was not aware that a human could do such evil things. When I meet with strangers, I get flashbacks of what he did.' A second identified woman, who is now living in China, was also raped by Zou in his student flat near Russell Square in October 2021 when she was unconscious, the court heard. She said: 'I know 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.' Scotland Yard said 24 women came forward following publicity in the media around Zou's trial to say they think they may have been attacked by him. Prosecutors say among them was a victim in China, known as Female D. In her statement, she wrote of being 'trapped in self-blame', 'gagged by shame' and being 'haunted' by nightmares of what happened. Commander Kevin Southworth, of the Metropolitan Police said: 'I hope the fact Zou can no longer harm others serves as a small amount of comfort to the women who have suffered immeasurably. 'I would also like to take this opportunity to stress that our investigation remains open and we continue to appeal to anyone who may think they have been a victim of Zou. 'Please come forward and speak with our team – we will treat you with empathy, kindness and respect.' Saira Pike, of the Crown Prosecution Service, said that Zou is a 'serial rapist and a danger to women'. She added: 'I'd like to take this opportunity to once again express my heartfelt thanks to the courageous women who came forward to report Zou's horrific crimes. 'They have been incredibly strong and brave – there is no doubt that their evidence helped us to secure his conviction, and the life sentence handed to him today.'
The Guardian
26-05-2025
- Business
- The Guardian
A new kind of gentrification is spreading through London – and emptying out schools
Teachers at Charlotte Sharman school in south London's Elephant and Castle are on strike this week, protesting against the fact that the primary school will be forced to close at the end of term. It is one of many inner London schools facing closure as a result of a 25% drop in under-fours in some boroughs, according to the most recent census. Charlotte Sharman is just around the corner from the site of the Heygate estate, which was demolished in 2014 and replaced by Elephant Park, a development of thousands of luxury apartments, built by the Australian developer Lendlease. After the Heygate was knocked down, the school roll slumped. Elephant Park, which has won many awards for 'placemaking excellence', is seen as an exemplar of a new global regeneration industry. In place of lower- and middle-income family housing, the new neighbourhoods are typically created to include luxury apartments set in high-security privatised public space, global retail brands, pop-ups, expensive bars and restaurants, and often a university or art gallery to provide cultural capital. Today, two-bedroom apartments in Elephant Park are on sale for between £900,000 and £1m, and of the 2,704 new homes, only 82 are for social housing. Twenty-five per cent of the new homes are designated 'affordable', but since the government changed the definition of affordable in 2010 to mean up to 80% of market rent or market value, that is financially far out of reach for the majority of Londoners and their families. Alex Mees, who works for the National Education Union and is on the picket line with the protesters, says: 'They've got rid of family homes in the area and replaced them with one- or two-bedroom apartments – all the families are moving out, they should have seen this coming.' The regeneration of so many new districts, from King's Cross to the Olympic Park, is part of a larger story of the extreme gentrification of cities like London where soaring house prices are leading directly to a decline in birthrates. A study by the Affordable Housing Commission found that 13% of British adults under the age of 45 and in a couple delayed or chose not to start a family because of their housing situation – with nearly 2 million people potentially affected. But the decline is much starker in cities such as London, which are experiencing the most extreme gentrification: research showed that while the capital's overall population is rising, the numbers between the age of 25–39, the typical age of housebuying and family formation, has recently dropped by 4%, with London Councils, the body representing the city's 32 boroughs, attributing it to the shortage of family housing. The knock-on effects are that across the south-east, millennials are leaving London for Bristol, Brighton and seaside towns along the south coast, such as Hastings, Eastbourne or Deal. The trend for families to leave the capital is pushing up house prices in these areas and is often far from welcome, spawning the derogatory acronym DFL (Down from London), while Deal has been branded 'Hackney on Sea'. Fernanda, an architect and mother of two who lives in Hackney, described how it's not just schools, but GP surgeries and small businesses – what she calls the 'ecosystem of the city' – that are closing. 'It is getting emptier and emptier and there is a clear change in demographics happening in front of our eyes,' she says, telling me that she has been invited to two farewell picnics in the next few weeks. 'One family bought a house in Nottingham and another family are moving to Kent. It's mostly people with younger kids because they're all piled up in a small flat – my son's class is not full.' The positive rhetoric and branding of placemaking is that it transforms run-down areas into vibrant and economically successful parts of the city. The reality is that it creates sterile places, emptied of so many of the essential aspects of urban life, except the expensive activities. The city may be emptier than ever of children and families, but tables at sought-after restaurants are still booked up weeks in advance. Another category able to stay put are older people, with the census finding that the proportion of the population in every age group over 50 (except for 80-84 year olds) increased, as many of these people bought property in another era, unwittingly benefiting from huge rises in property values of up to 700%. Today, London boroughs like Southwark and Hackney are a mix of new half-empty neighbourhoods of luxury apartments, round the corner from streets of multimillion pound Georgian and Victorian homes that have soared in value alongside cramped and unaffordable private rental accommodation and a fast declining amount of social housing. The dictionary definition of sterile is 'not able to produce children or young' and children are the canary in the coalmine for what is happening to our cities. When the city is no longer able to cater to children, or the range of other diverse uses that keep communities healthy and vibrant, places don't die, but neither are they truly alive. Anna Minton is the author of Big Capital: Who is London for? Her new book on the sterile city will be published by Penguin next year
