‘This could have been me’: Chinese women throng Germany trials of ‘Driving School’ rape network

By Pierrick Yvon

German courts have been trying a group of mostly Chinese men accused of running a sexual abuse network that drugged victims and that members called the “Driving School for Experts”.

Their dark secret, now coming to light in a series of trials, was that in their Telegram chat group, a “car ride” was code for a rape and “dead pigs” referred to their victims, women who had usually been heavily sedated.

The cases have evoked that of Gisele Pelicot, the Frenchwoman who waived her right to anonymity during the 2024 trial of her ex-husband and dozens of strangers who raped her while she was unconscious.

The German hearings have attracted less media attention, but have often drawn courtroom audiences of mostly Chinese women who have closely followed the hearings.

One young woman recently attended the Berlin trial of Shao Zhiting, a medical doctor accused of sexual assault and of giving advice to the other men on how to sedate their mostly Chinese victims.

“I just want to know what happened,” the woman told AFP, asking to use the pseudonym Wang Ming.

“I feel like this could have been me,” added the woman in her late 20s who has lived in Germany for five years.

She has travelled to Berlin from Hamburg three times to watch the trial of Shao, a slight man in his 30s with glasses, a buzz cut and wearing a surgical mask, who has appeared impassive in the courtroom.

Shao is accused of having advised the other men on how to dose drugs such as triazolam, a sedative mainly used to treat insomnia.

Wang said she has watched the trial because of curiosity about the judicial process, but also “to show solidarity for the other women”.

“Being there for them is the only thing I could do,” she said.

‘Contempt for humanity’

In all, eight men — all but one of them Chinese — have been implicated in the “Driving School” network, called the “Fahrschule fuer Experten” in German.

According to the prosecution, Shao’s advice directly helped the group leader, Zhang Dapeng, to rape a woman in January 2024.

A Frankfurt court in February sentenced Zhang to 14 years in jail for seven rapes and four attempted murders.

See also: UK court sentences Chinese student to life in prison for ‘campaign of rape’

Another group member, a 28-year-old Chinese master’s student in robotics named only as J. Zhongyi, was sentenced to 11 years and three months in jail for repeatedly drugging and raping his girlfriend and filming the abuse.

“The aim in each case was to sedate the victim so heavily that she showed no defensive reactions even when in severe pain,” the court found in the trial of J. Zhongyi.

Judge Markus Koppenleitner said the crimes had shown “contempt for humanity and for women on a truly monstrous scale”.

The cases have stirred significant interest among the Chinese community in Germany.

In China, many women are still reluctant to come forward with harassment charges, and it is rare for cases to make it to court in a legal system that places a heavy burden on the claimant.

Wang said the Berlin court’s 30 seats reserved for the public were “95 percent” occupied by Chinese women, with others waiting in the stairwell.

Some of them had formed a support group that discusses the proceedings, she said.

“It’s like a study group,” Wang said. “Some people maybe studied law or medicine. Some understood this part, some understood that part better. It’s like putting a puzzle together.”

‘Ideas of male superiority’

Another trial observer who asked to be named only by her surname, Zhang, told AFP the case was revealing of China as a “patriarchal society”, where “traditional ideas of male superiority and the preference for sons have remained very strong”.

China’s government long strictly enforced its One Child Policy. It ended in 2016, but its effects linger, including a gender imbalance caused by many families’ preference for male offspring.

“Women became a scarce resource” and were often “regarded like consumer goods — something to be evaluated, selected and used”, said Zhang, a freelance artist in her forties.

Wang said about the doctor’s trial that she observed “no signs of regret, like remorse towards the victims”.

“I’m disappointed, definitely,” she added, “but I’m not surprised.”