Members of a sexual predator network on Telegram tried to hide their crimes with code words

They called them­selves the “Ger­man dri­ving school for ex­perts,” but pros­e­cu­tors say the true pur­pose of their Telegram chats was to brag about the women they raped and share tips about how to drug them.

In posts that some­times in­clud­ed pho­tos and videos of their at­tacks on un­con­scious vic­tims, they re­ferred to women as “cars,” seda­tives as “fu­el” and rape as “dri­ving,” ac­cord­ing to court doc­u­ments. They called their vic­tims “dead pigs.”

In­ves­ti­ga­tors have been por­ing through sev­er­al years’ worth of posts in rough­ly two dozen group chats on the pop­u­lar mes­sag­ing app that au­thor­i­ties be­lieve served an on­line preda­tor net­work of main­ly Chi­nese men tar­get­ing most­ly Chi­nese women in Ger­many. Their in­ves­ti­ga­tion has al­ready led to the con­vic­tions of three al­leged in­ner cir­cle mem­bers on rape and oth­er charges. A fourth was con­vict­ed Wednes­day in Berlin.

“The per­pe­tra­tors were char­ac­ter­ized by a par­tic­u­lar ruth­less­ness, an ob­jec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the vic­tims, and the per­fid­i­ous plan­ning of their crimes,” Frank­furt chief pros­e­cu­tor Do­minik Mies told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press.

Ma­jor de­tails of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­main un­known, at least to the pub­lic, in­clud­ing how many at­tacks and per­pe­tra­tors have been linked to the Ger­man Telegram chats and how the chats, some of which re­port­ed­ly had tens of thou­sands of mem­bers, could have op­er­at­ed for so long. It’s al­so un­clear if the chats are linked to a bal­loon­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tion in Eu­rope and the Amer­i­c­as in­to drug-fa­cil­i­tat­ed sex­u­al as­saults by misog­y­nist on­line com­mu­ni­ties.

Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty ral­lies to sup­port the vic­tims

Un­der Ger­man pri­va­cy laws, pros­e­cu­tors are lim­it­ed in what they can say out­side the court­room, doc­u­ments are re­strict­ed and, in the on­go­ing case in Berlin, mem­bers of the pub­lic have been forced to leave the court­room dur­ing parts of the tri­al.

This may be why the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the Telegram group has gar­nered less at­ten­tion in Ger­many than might be ex­pect­ed. But mem­bers of the coun­try’s Chi­nese com­mu­ni­ty, most­ly women, have been at­tend­ing court pro­ceed­ings to show sup­port for the vic­tims even if they don’t know them.

“What makes one re­al­ly an­gry is to see that such groups hate women, they have no re­spect,” said Fu Xi­ao, who trav­eled rough­ly 500 kilo­me­ters (310 miles) to Berlin last week to at­tend the tri­al. “Women aren’t seen as peo­ple.”

In Chi­na, state me­dia has cov­ered the cas­es com­pre­hen­sive­ly, but wider dis­cus­sion about the pros­e­cu­tions on Chi­nese-lan­guage so­cial me­dia like Red­note has been par­tial­ly cen­sored. Cer­tain tags have been more like­ly to get a post delet­ed or banned on Red­note, screen­shots and search­es show. But posts us­ing less di­rect lan­guage have sur­vived the cen­sors, in­clud­ing ones that re­fer to “date rape” or the eu­phemistic “stu­dents study­ing abroad in Ger­many.”

Chi­na’s Min­istry of Pub­lic Se­cu­ri­ty and Red­note didn’t re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

Cas­es echo a land­mark French tri­al

The Ger­man cas­es have drawn com­par­isons to the at­tacks on Gisèle Peli­cot, a French woman who, over the course of near­ly a decade, was re­peat­ed­ly drugged and raped by her then-hus­band and strangers he in­vit­ed to their home. The tri­al — and Peli­cot’s de­ci­sion to waive her anonymi­ty — prompt­ed a reck­on­ing over rape cul­ture in France and be­yond.

“Peli­cot is not an iso­lat­ed case,” Judge Markus Kop­pen­leit­ner said dur­ing a hear­ing in Mu­nich for one of the Chi­nese men con­vict­ed in the Ger­man in­ves­ti­ga­tion. “This is not a Chi­nese or French phe­nom­e­non, but one that al­so ex­ists in Ger­many and, ul­ti­mate­ly, world­wide.”

Sim­i­lar cas­es to the “Ger­man dri­ving school” in­ves­ti­ga­tion have been pop­ping up around the globe. Al­though au­thor­i­ties haven’t pub­licly linked them to the Ger­man pros­e­cu­tions, some in­ves­ti­ga­tors have cit­ed tips from Ger­man au­thor­i­ties and jour­nal­ists as cru­cial to their progress.

In Los An­ge­les, Ger­man in­ves­ti­ga­tors last year reached out to po­lice about a po­ten­tial sus­pect in drug-fa­cil­i­tat­ed sex­u­al as­saults. The de­fen­dant, a grad­u­ate stu­dent from Chi­na, is ac­cused of drug­ging and sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ing three women in LA af­ter he al­leged­ly pro­cured the drugs from a Chi­nese na­tion­al in Ger­many.

In the Nether­lands last month, po­lice ar­rest­ed four men sus­pect­ed of drug­ging and sex­u­al­ly abus­ing women af­ter hear­ing from au­thor­i­ties in Ger­many and the U.K. Dutch po­lice said the al­leged per­pe­tra­tors used so­cial me­dia chat groups to dis­sem­i­nate videos show­ing the abuse and dis­cuss how to drug vic­tims.

And Eu­ropol, the Eu­ro­pean Union’s po­lice agency, last week an­nounced “Project Medusa,” an in­ter­na­tion­al op­er­a­tion de­signed to dis­man­tle on­line net­works that pro­mote drug-fa­cil­i­tat­ed sex­u­al as­saults. Law en­force­ment from Ger­many and the U.K. are lead­ing the op­er­a­tion, which has al­ready net­ted 57 ar­rests.

Cas­es raise ques­tions about Telegram

The Ger­man preda­tor net­work man­aged to thrive de­spite clear vi­o­la­tions of Telegram’s terms of ser­vice, again rais­ing ques­tions about how the plat­form has been used for crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty.

In 2024, the app’s founder was ar­rest­ed in Paris over al­le­ga­tions that the plat­form was be­ing used for il­lic­it ac­tiv­i­ty, in­clud­ing drug traf­fick­ing and the dis­tri­b­u­tion of child sex­u­al abuse im­ages. He de­nied wrong­do­ing, blam­ing surg­ing num­bers of Telegram users that he said “caused grow­ing pains that made it eas­i­er for crim­i­nals to abuse our plat­form.” The in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing.

“Sex­u­al vi­o­lence is ex­plic­it­ly for­bid­den by Telegram’s terms of ser­vice and such con­tent is rou­tine­ly re­moved,” the com­pa­ny said in a state­ment. “Telegram ful­fils all of its le­gal oblig­a­tions in re­la­tion to such harm­ful con­tent, in­clud­ing every­thing set out by” the Eu­ro­pean Union’s Dig­i­tal Ser­vices Act.

The com­pa­ny didn’t re­spond to ques­tions about the Ger­man cas­es, in­clud­ing how pho­tos, videos and com­ments about sex­u­al crimes were post­ed for years in the app, whether Telegram was aware of the ac­tiv­i­ty and what, if any­thing, it did to alert the au­thor­i­ties.

Some of the Ger­man Telegram chats date back to at least 2020, court doc­u­ments show. At­tor­ney Mag­dale­na Geb­hard, who rep­re­sent­ed a vic­tim in a pre­vi­ous Berlin tri­al that led to a con­vic­tion, said there was an in­ner cir­cle of eight per­pe­tra­tors but that some of the chat groups had up to 50,000 mem­bers.

Po­lice on­ly be­came aware of the net­work in 2024 af­ter a man in Frank­furt, re­ferred to by Ger­man courts as Dapeng Z., changed his tac­tics from drug­ging and sex­u­al­ly abus­ing fe­male ac­quain­tances to tar­get­ing strangers he met on­line, ac­cord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors.

Ger­man po­lice ar­rest­ed Dapeng Z., whom Ger­man and Chi­nese me­dia have re­port­ed is the group’s ring­leader, in 2024 in co­op­er­a­tion with Chi­nese law en­force­ment, ac­cord­ing to the Chi­nese con­sulate in Frank­furt and the Bei­jing News, a state-run me­dia out­let.

He was sen­tenced in Feb­ru­ary to 14 years in prison for ag­gra­vat­ed rape, at­tempt­ed mur­der and oth­er of­fens­es, though he has ap­pealed. His at­tor­neys didn’t re­spond to a re­quest for com­ment.

Al­though au­thor­i­ties haven’t pub­licly said how many women were vic­tim­ized by the “dri­ving school” net­work, they have said their in­ves­ti­ga­tion is on­go­ing, mean­ing there could be fur­ther ar­rests and ad­di­tion­al vic­tims. Geb­hard’s client, for ex­am­ple, on­ly learned she had been sex­u­al­ly as­sault­ed af­ter in­ves­ti­ga­tors dis­cov­ered video footage.

An­oth­er de­fen­dant con­vict­ed in Berlin

On Wednes­day, Zhit­ing S., a 32-year-old trained medic, was con­vict­ed of be­ing an ac­ces­so­ry to rape, among oth­er charges, and sen­tenced to five years in prison. The de­fense plans to ap­peal the ver­dict.

The Berlin state court found that in the chats, Zhit­ing S. had point­ed to a par­tic­u­lar seda­tive be­fore an as­sault by the man con­vict­ed in Frank­furt, though he wasn’t alone in of­fer­ing such ad­vice.

Zhit­ing S. al­so was con­vict­ed on three charges of sex­u­al co­er­cion re­lat­ed to al­leged abuse of his part­ner in Chi­na. Video record­ings led in­ves­ti­ga­tors to those crimes.

De­fense at­tor­ney Ehssan Khaz­a­eli said ear­li­er that his client has ad­mit­ted be­ing part of a chat group but did not of­fer any sig­nif­i­cant ad­vice. —BERLIN (AP)

_________

Sto­ry by KIRSTEN GRIESHABER, STE­FANIE DAZIO and HUIZHONG WU

Wu re­port­ed from Bangkok. As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­porters Geir Moul­son and Fan­ny Broder­sen in Berlin, Mol­ly Quell and Mike Corder in The Hague, Nether­lands, Jaimie Ding in Los An­ge­les and Jill Law­less in Lon­don con­tributed to this re­port.

___

ED­I­TOR’S NOTE: This sto­ry in­cludes dis­cus­sion of sex­u­al vi­o­lence. If you or some­one you know needs help, please call 1-800-656-4673 in the U.S., 116 016 in Ger­many or 15117905157 in Chi­na.