‘I know I did something terrible and that it has had terrible consequences,’ 27-year-old Chinese student Zhongyi J.* told a Munich court in February. The court convicted him of two counts of attempted murder and seven counts of aggravated rape and sentenced him to 11 years and three months in prison. The judge called the offences ‘monstrous acts’ and said the case had pushed the law into ‘uncharted legal territory.’
Prosecutors say Zhongyi J.* repeatedly drugged and raped his neighbour at least seven times between February and December 2024, administering sedatives and anaesthetics in doses that could have been life‑threatening. Investigators and commentators have compared the pattern of long‑term secret drugging and sexual violence to the abuse suffered by Gisele Pelicot in France.
The trial is connected to a broader investigation into a Telegram group of eight men known as the ‘German Driving School.’ All but one of the men are Chinese and all but one live in Germany. The victims identified so far are largely Chinese women who knew the suspects as partners, colleagues, friends or acquaintances; many only realised what had occurred when police contacted them.
Prosecutors say members of the chat used coded language to coordinate assaults and swap practical advice and recordings: discussing which medications to use, dosages, how to assault women once unconscious, and what tools to employ. They shared photographs and videos of attacks. Phrases such as ‘looking for a car’ meant seeking a new victim, ‘oil’ or ‘fuel’ referred to sedatives, a ‘luxury car’ denoted an especially attractive woman, and sedated women were disparagingly called ‘dead pigs.’
Authorities first arrested an alleged ringleader, Dapeng Z.*, who lived in Frankfurt, after several victims in Hesse filed complaints. Prosecutors say that in January 2021 he laced a friend’s food with a sedative, raped her and recorded the assault on a phone, a digital camera and a GoPro worn on his head; he is accused of similarly targeting multiple female colleagues.
Another group member, Tong Z.*, a student in Berlin, was convicted of rape in August 2025. He is accused of drugging and raping a woman on a date and filming the attack, and of secretly installing hidden cameras that recorded eight other women. His chat alias was reportedly ‘God by Day, Devil by Night.’
The network began to come apart after Dapeng Z.* allegedly targeted women advertising apartments for sublet in January 2024. At viewings, he is said to have covered women’s mouths and noses with cloths soaked in anaesthetic, raped them and recorded the assaults. Four victims later reported those incidents, and Dapeng Z.* was arrested in November 2024.
Charlotte Hirz, a psychologist at LARA, a Berlin resource centre for survivors of sexualised violence, highlighted the striking dehumanisation of victims in the chats. She pointed to the ways perpetrators compared women to cars and used insulting labels like ‘dead pigs,’ warning that closed online groups can feed misogynistic fantasies when there is no outside corrective influence.
Investigative reporters at public broadcaster NDR’s STRG_F spent more than a year exposing similar Telegram networks. They documented chatrooms with hundreds to tens of thousands of members where participants discussed methods for drugging and raping women and shared recordings. Some users wrote comments such as ‘it’s not rape if she doesn’t know it happened.’ The journalists also found links in chats to online stores selling substances with sedative effects.
Legal experts and campaigners say gaps in German law have made it harder to pursue some related offences. Under current statutes, mere possession or viewing of real‑life sexual assault footage is not automatically a criminal offence, and simple membership of a group where such material is shared does not by itself trigger prosecution. Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig (SPD) has proposed reforms to criminalise distribution of such images and to tighten rules covering online sexual abuse and misuse of AI as part of a broader legislative package.
Germany’s rape laws have been subject to increased public scrutiny in the wake of protests after TV personality Collien Fernandes alleged her ex‑husband distributed hundreds of AI‑generated pornographic images of her and ran fake social accounts impersonating her; he denies those claims.
At sentencing in Munich the judge stressed the problem was not limited to any one country: ‘this is not a Chinese or French phenomenon, but also a German one. A global one,’ he said. He noted that a life sentence had been legally possible and described the 11‑year term as comparatively lenient given the severity of the crimes, citing the defendant’s remorse, a partial confession, his young age and the fact that victim‑offender mediation had taken place.
Editor’s note: Deutsche Welle follows the German press code and withholds full names of suspected criminals or victims to protect privacy.
Edited by Rina Goldenberg