“I know I did something terrible and it has terrible consequences,” Chinese student Zhongyi J*, 28, told a Munich court in February. Today, J* was found guilty of two counts of attempted murder and seven counts of aggravated rape and sentenced to 11 years and three months in prison. The judge described J*’s crimes as “monstrous acts” and said “we have entered uncharted legal territory.”
In a case reminiscent of Dominique Pellicot’s long-term abuse in France against his wife Gisele, J* was accused of drugging and raping his neighbor at least seven times between February and December 2024. Prosecutors said Jay* knowingly administered life-threatening doses of sedatives and anesthetics.
J*’s trial in Munich is part of a broader series of investigations into eight people who were members of a Telegram chat group called “German Driving School.” All but one of the men are Chinese, and all but one live in Germany. His victims – those who have been identified – were almost exclusively Chinese women and were the men’s partners, colleagues, friends or acquaintances. Most had no idea what had happened to them until they were contacted by the police.
In the Telegram chat group, men used code words to discuss what drugs to use to render women unconscious, the dosage, what they did to the women while they were unconscious, what tools and objects were used. He also shared photographs and recordings of his crimes. “Looking for a car” refers to the search for a new victim; “Oil” or “fuel” were code words for sedatives; “Luxury car” was meant to refer to a particularly attractive woman and unconscious women were referred to as “dead pigs”.
The group’s leader, Dapeng Z*, who lives in Frankfurt, was earlier arrested by police after several of his victims filed charges in the west-central state of Hesse. In January 2021, Z* spiked a female friend’s evening meal, raped her, and took photographs and film of his crimes using his phone, a digital camera, and a GoPro attached to his head. Z* abused drugs and raped several female coworkers.
Another member of the group, Tong Z*, a student from Berlin, was convicted of rape in August 2025. He drugged and raped a woman during a date and filmed his crimes. He also secretly recorded eight other women using hidden cameras installed in the bathroom. The pseudonym of his chat group was “God by Day, Devil by Night”.
The group’s activities were revealed in January 2024 after Dapeng Z* targeted women seeking to rent out their apartments. During the meeting, he covered their mouths and noses with a cloth soaked in anesthesia, raped them, and documented the attacks. All four women remembered what had happened and informed the police and he was finally arrested in November 2024.
Misogynistic abuse promoted by online chat groups
“What I think makes this case particularly striking […] It is simply this dehumanization that becomes so evident in the way criminals treat their victims: comparing them to cars or even calling them dead pigs,” Charlotte Hirz, a psychologist LaraA resource center for victims of sexual violence in Berlin told DW.
According to Hirz, online chat groups such as the Telegram group run by Dapeng Z* helped reinforce the process of dehumanization among men and promote misogynistic fantasies. “If there’s no social reform, or no one is on the outside looking in to see, ‘What’s happening here?’ or ‘Are you guys really crazy?’, then certainly these violent fantasies can gain a lot of momentum,” she said.
CTRL_F Investigative Reporting Team on the German public broadcaster NDR It took more than a year to uncover this type of network on Telegram. It found chat groups with hundreds to thousands of members who discussed drugging and raping women and even shared recordings of their alleged crimes. One user wrote, “If she doesn’t know it happened then it’s not rape.” Online stores also placed links to date rape drugs and other substances with sedative effects in the chats.
It is not a criminal offense to possess and witness real-life sexual assaults. Being a member of a chat group in which such material is shared is not enough to warrant prosecution. Germany’s Justice Minister Stefanie Hubig, of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), plans to make the distribution of such images a criminal offense as part of a broader package of reforms.
Germany’s rape laws have come under scrutiny in recent weeks following protests in the wake of allegations made by TV personality Colleen Fernandes against her ex-husband, actor Christian Ullmann. Fernandes has accused Ulmen of being behind hundreds of AI-generated pornographic photos of her distributed online, as well as social media accounts imitating her. Elmen has denied the allegations.
“This is not a Chinese or French phenomenon, but also a German phenomenon. A global phenomenon,” the judge said in remarks during the sentencing of Zhongyi J* in Munich.
The judge told the defendant he was “lucky” not to be sentenced to life in prison. The judge said, “Life in prison could have been a possibility; an 11-year sentence is mild for your crimes. But the defendant has shown remorse, made a partial confession, and is still young. And a victim-offender mediation process took place.”
*Editor’s note: Deutsche Welle adheres to the German press code, which emphasizes the importance of protecting the privacy of suspected perpetrators or victims and urges us to refrain from disclosing full names in such cases.
If you or someone you know is experiencing or has experienced any form of gender-based violence, visit the website lila.help (https://lila.help) lists reliable helplines and NGOs that provide assistance in almost every country in the world.
Edited by Reena Goldenberg