Serial rapist Frank Hu used hot chocolate, coffee and a juice to secretly sedate at least seven women whom he filmed while he abused them.
For three years, Hu – a migration agent also known as Xiadong Hu – was seemingly getting away with his crimes until a string of women began showing up at police stations and hospitals fearing they had been drugged.
Victoria Police and Australian Border Force officers raid Frank Hu’s Melbourne office in 2019.
One victim became so gravely ill she went into cardiac arrest and spent time in intensive care. Hu at times accompanied some of his victims to hospital when they overdosed.
Court documents show that after seizing and analysing Hu’s electronic devices following a raid on his suite of offices in Little Collins Street, investigators connected close to 70 rapes to Hu, alongside 18 sexual assaults.
On Tuesday, the 39-year-old faced the County Court, where the full extent of his offending was made public for the first time.
The court heard Hu’s planned attacks were documented in thousands of photographs and videos of his unconscious victims as he abused or attempted to abuse them between 2016 and 2019.
Some of those recordings, police said, were later posted on an online fetish website for people interested in sex with “sleeping” women.
In a victim impact statement read out in court, one of Hu’s victims said the crimes against her had greatly affected her relationship with family, friends, partners and colleagues. She now lived with a personal alarm.
The woman, who was raped on camera dozens of times, sobbed as she revealed the toll the crimes had taken on her.
“I come from a very traditional Chinese family. There is absolutely no way I can share this experience with my parents. How could I let them know that I had been drugged and raped,” she said.
“I keep thinking that if I paid more attention, if I overthought more, I would save myself and others. Now I overthink almost everything. Very small things can make me cry. I do not trust anyone.”
An undated photo of Frank Hu as a younger man.
Crown prosecutor Georgia McMaster said that throughout the offending Hu, a married father of two, operated a business that largely employed women on student visas to perform roles including administration, handling accountants and translation.
McMaster said police launched an investigation into Hu in 2018 after Australian Border Force officers found suspicious material on his mobile phone at Melbourne Airport.
But as police struggled to identify the women the investigation “languished” until 2019 when victims began coming forward.
One recalled going to the Little Collins Street offices to apply for a job in 2018. She was offered a cup of hot chocolate before falling unconscious and later waking in hospital.
Another victim told police she visited the same premises during 2019 to apply for a job and was filling out paperwork when she noticed the drink she had been consuming tasted bitter.
She said Hu told her “you haven’t finished [your milk], there is still more” before she later woke up in intensive care. The woman was so badly harmed she had to be placed on a ventilator before later suffering a cardiac arrest. Forensic analysis found a range of substances in her system consistent with sedatives and tranquillisers.
In 2019, another victim said she was given a juice which tasted bitter and when she took the lid off, white power fell from the straw. She ran from the building to a police station and went to hospital.
The same year, another of Hu’s victims began her own investigations, after repeatedly ending up in hospital after blacking out in the building, and discovered he’d created an account on a website where people posted footage of themselves having sex with unconscious women.
Hu was arrested in August 2019 and charged soon after. He has pleaded guilty to eight counts of rape and three counts of sexual assault, which relate to multiple instances of each crime. He also pleaded guilty to multiple counts of intentionally causing injury and one of recklessly causing serious injury relating to rendering his victim unconscious.
During his initial police interview, Hu admitted to having sex with and filming one of the victims but said she had simply fallen asleep during sexual intercourse.
“When she fall asleep, it doesn’t mean stop,” Hu said.
Defence barrister Christopher Terry said his client was remorseful. Terry said an expert believed Hu had a rare form of sexual fetishism.
“This is a man who very much understood the wrongness of his action but was compelled to continue his offending … by this particular form of rare paraphilia.
“It shocks the consciousness and will no doubt shock the general public.”
Judge Trevor Wraight said the offending went way beyond a desire to engage in such sexual activity, with Hu planning and documenting his calculated crimes.
He noted one victim alone had more than 1000 images and 190 videos taken of her without her knowledge.
“There is a consistent taking of photographs, even ones where there is no sexual activity alleged. He’s taking photos of them falling asleep on the table; he documents the whole process,” Wraight said.
Hu was remanded in custody to be sentenced at a later date.
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