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00:00There was an element of trust
00:27Frank had over these women based upon his position as an older male, as a boss.
00:34How many victims are involved in this?
00:37How many people has he offended against?
00:43We have someone who is actively recruiting international students
00:47for the purpose of sexually offending against them.
00:50They've accepted something to drink from him
00:53and they've woken up either in hospital or at home.
00:57It was the perfect crime because you have a victim
01:01who doesn't know that they've been a victim.
01:04I was scared of Frank.
01:06I wish I'd never met him.
01:09I mean, it's frightening.
01:11This was backyard anaesthesia.
01:13How did this happen under everyone's noses in plain sight?
01:18Oh, my God, this is...
01:20This is really big.
01:32What's the law you want?
01:34My name's Lawrence Shanahan.
01:36I'm a detective leading senior consul of police
01:38and I currently work at the Hobsons Bay Criminal Investigation Unit.
01:42On 27 July 2019, I was working the morning crime shift at Melbourne Socket,
01:59which stands for Sex Offence and Child Abuse Investigation Team.
02:01It was approximately 2 o'clock when I received a phone call from the St Vincent's Hospital
02:11and I spoke to a young lady who informed me that she'd been at work
02:15when she believed that she'd been drugged by her boss
02:18and believed that she had been sexually offended against.
02:23And she'd gotten very sick and had a cardiac arrest.
02:27It obviously was strange to her
02:28because she said she wasn't feeling ill prior to going to her first day of work,
02:32in translation, at an immigration agency.
02:38Her boss was a man by the name of Frank Hu.
02:41She states that there was a period of time where she believed she left her carton of milk alone.
02:59And then when she came back, she had a drink of it and it tasted bitter.
03:03It was a short time after that that she started to feel dizzy and feel unwell.
03:08And then the next thing she knows she wakes up in hospital.
03:17She just felt like something was off and something wasn't right.
03:21There was something about this job that just rung a bell with me.
03:26She was working in an office in the city.
03:30She was a Chinese student and the fact that she said her boss's name was Frank
03:35and that was something that really stuck to me.
03:40I got further details from her and let her know that the afternoon guys that were coming in,
03:45I actually saw them come in as I was on the phone to her.
03:48I said that they would be out there to have a chat to her.
03:50So as soon as I got off the phone, I had this thought in my mind that I've heard this before.
04:00I'm sure I've had a job that's similar to this involving this person, Frank.
04:06His name is Xiaodong Hu and goes by the English name Frank.
04:12He had nine offices within the same building in Little Collins Street.
04:17Multiple businesses which all appeared to be immigration agencies.
04:24He was both an Australian and Chinese citizen.
04:26So I looked on Interpose and then I found another job.
04:34I looked at it and I go, well, I don't know this job.
04:37But this isn't the job that I'm thinking of in my mind.
04:41I was like, OK, there's a third one here because I know I've done another one as well.
04:46Well, the connections between Victims 1, 2 and 3 were that they were all employed by Frank Hu.
04:54All his victims were Chinese.
04:58They've had something to drink or eat with him.
05:02And then they've become unconscious and woken up hours later.
05:07So I remember saying to the guys, there's something in this.
05:13I briefed the afternoon shift on the latest alleged victim of Frank Hu.
05:19And they went to St Vincent's Hospital to talk to the young lady.
05:22I'm Dr Janine Rouse and I am a clinical forensic physician at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine.
05:39We primarily work at the interface between medicine and law and with living victims of sexual violence, interpersonal violence.
05:46That comes with its own unique set of challenges.
05:52So on the 27th of July 2019, I remember distinctly I was out to dinner before starting a night shift.
06:01And I received a phone call from a colleague.
06:11My colleague was calling to tell me about a case.
06:17The story was that a female had woken up from intensive care where she had been intubated after having had a cardiac arrest where she'd been shocked back to life and required CPR.
06:33And she had alleged that she had been drugged on her first day of her new job and that she may have been sexually assaulted.
06:46Immediately, I knew that we'd had a case almost identical to this eight months prior that I'd also attended.
06:53A victim had contacted police and she had described starting her first day at a new job and her boss had given her a hot chocolate to drink.
07:11Shortly afterwards, she felt unwell.
07:22There was a period of unknown.
07:34And she'd ended up in the hospital.
07:36And she was concerned that she'd been sexually assaulted.
07:45So I became involved then.
07:48I conducted a forensic medical examination and collected toxicology.
07:55And the toxicology came back showing that there had been sedative hypnotic agents administered to that victim.
08:04Because the toxicology came back with such an unexpected result, I just assumed that this case had proceeded.
08:16So I was shocked and surprised eight months later to hear an almost identical story.
08:22Literally, my heart missed a beat when I realised this was a serial offence.
08:33I immediately ran out of the restaurant and got on the phone to the police and said,
08:38this is a serial guy and he's going to do a runner.
08:40Because I remembered he was from overseas and that it was sort of some sort of immigration set up in the city.
08:46Right in the heart of Melbourne CBD.
08:48Already, time has passed, it had been about four days since the alleged incident.
08:58And time is DNA, unfortunately.
09:01She'd been in intensive care for days, so she would have been washed and cleaned and clothes changed.
09:06And so already, I'm thinking, gee, the forensic value in this exam is already dwindling.
09:14Things were confounded by all the drugs that she would have been administered in hospital.
09:19So even before arriving at the hospital, I was madly calling the treating doctors
09:23and asking about any samples of blood that may have been taken when she arrived.
09:28As it turned out, there was a sample of blood that was taken.
09:33So I was frantically on the phone saying, you need to get your hands on that vial of blood.
09:39The police will need this, even if you have to physically go down to the pathology lab
09:43and make sure that's not discarded.
09:45That is so important.
09:47We have to learn the lessons from the case eight months prior
09:51and we have to get everything right this time.
09:58On the morning of July 28, 2019, I was pretty keen to come back and find out what the afternoon guys had done.
10:14By the time I came in the morning, I remember being approached by one of the women from IFAS, Detective Kaye.
10:22And she said, you wouldn't believe what we found.
10:24There was a fourth victim.
10:28Another job on top of the three that there was from the day before that I knew about.
10:39She was also a Chinese student.
10:42She started working and it was her trial day.
10:47Frank had offered her a hot chocolate multiple times.
10:51And she didn't want one.
10:52But she felt obligated to accept after he insisted.
11:02After that, she started to feel violently ill.
11:05She's gone to the toilet and thrown up.
11:09She's come back into the office and Frank has offered her a tablet to help ease her stomach.
11:14Which again, she's accepted.
11:15And then from there, she's basically become unconscious.
11:18And she's woken up in the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
11:31Frank, who has actually taken her to hospital himself in an Uber.
11:40And it was at that stage I was like, oh my God, this is, this is really big.
11:46We have someone who is actively recruiting international students from China for the purpose of sexually offending against them.
11:54At the time of reporting, two of the victims didn't want their matters investigated further.
12:02These people are reporting the most horrific thing that they've ever experienced in their life.
12:10They're at their most vulnerable the day they walk into a police station and tell us their story.
12:14Sometimes they just want to be heard, they just want to be believed, and quite often, that's enough.
12:25We now had two active cases.
12:28The report from yesterday, July 27, and the fourth victim I'd just heard about.
12:34We're joining the dots.
12:36They've responded to an advertisement on a Chinese website for an admin or translator position at his work.
12:46They were working alone with him.
12:49They've accepted something to drink from him.
12:52And they've woken up either in hospital or at home.
12:58And then I got told about the Border Force download.
13:00Frank Hu had been moving back and forth between Australia and China for many years.
13:13Frank was of interest to Australian Border Force as he's an immigration agent.
13:18They had stopped him on his return to Australia in 2018.
13:23And they were able to search his belongings.
13:25And they've downloaded his phone as part of that process.
13:31They found a bunch of images and videos of women who were unconscious and looked as though they were being sexually interfered with.
13:42He was questioned about this.
13:45However, he stated that it was role-playing and it was all consensual.
13:50Which couldn't be disproven at the time.
13:53Border Force had supplied information to Victoria Police.
14:00Unfortunately, at the time, no women were able to be identified.
14:04So there wasn't enough evidence to take the investigation further.
14:09I've had a look at the images and videos.
14:12And then I remember talking to the guys and going,
14:16I don't think this is any of the four victims that we're talking about.
14:20So it was at that stage, it was like, how many victims are involved in this?
14:26How many people has he offended against?
14:29The images and videos we were watching were really graphic.
14:33And it was really quite disturbing and it was a really serious job.
14:47In the sexual offence investigation, arresting the suspect is often the last step in the process.
14:52But in this case, the priority was to get Frank off the streets.
14:58It was clear that he was continuing to offend.
15:01So the most important thing was keeping community safe.
15:04My name is Sarah Morse.
15:15In July 2019, I was working as a detective senior sergeant at the sexual crime squad.
15:20This investigation started with the Melbourne Socket.
15:25However, they became aware that it was likely to breach sort of their scope because of the number of victims.
15:32They required extra resources.
15:35The sexual crime squad has a greater capacity to investigate these offences.
15:39So we took Laurie into the sexual crime squad and he joined one of our teams.
15:45So we were able to assist initially with the search warrants.
15:51Everyone within the office really chipped in and just made this their primary focus.
15:56Just gathered in as much evidence as we could in a small amount of time to get search warrants issued by the magistrate
16:02so we could go and arrest this person.
16:12On the 1st of August 2019, we executed simultaneous search warrants on multiple offices on Little Collins Street.
16:19Office 303, which was on level 3 of the Little Collins building, was his primary personal office.
16:37I remember knocking on the door, telling it was police and for him to open up.
16:42I'd clearly woken him up. He was half asleep.
16:48The first thing I did was arrest him, give him his caution rights.
16:52I then searched him and he had women's underwear on.
16:57He had a pair of women's underwear in his pocket as well as pantyhose and condoms in his pocket.
17:04And he'd been asleep on some grey matting, which I would later identify in the videos and images of his offending.
17:16Franku had his personal office on level 3, but there were other offices he'd leased within the building.
17:22His business was mainly run out of an office on level 10.
17:26So he sent a team up there as well.
17:29One of the employees actually approached police and disclosed that she believed that she had been offended against by Frank as well.
17:38So we're now looking at victim number 5 that we've identified.
17:41This is a picture taken from the interview I did with Frank Hu.
17:56The first thing I notice is the long fingernails.
18:01Really long fingernails.
18:02It was an interview in which he was very steadfast that he had done nothing wrong.
18:12Frank Hu agreed that the women who had made allegations against him had indeed been unconscious in his presence.
18:19But he said he'd done nothing to contribute to that.
18:22I showed Frank images of him sexually offending against an unconscious female.
18:26To which he said they'd had sex, it was consensual, she had fallen asleep during sex, but just because she was asleep that it doesn't mean you can stop.
18:39Which I contested and stated that that's not the case and that that is rape.
18:44He was very steadfast and just would not admit what he'd done was wrong.
18:49Frank Hu not making any admissions of guilt didn't change anything.
18:55We still had to prove each charge.
18:58We began working through the evidence we'd collected at his office when we arrested him.
19:08This is a close-up of the temporary mattress she was sleeping on.
19:12And this is an image of a syringe that was located in his office.
19:21We found a whole bunch of different drugs with blister packets, bottles of tablets, multiple syringes and cannulas, along with sex toys, women's underwear.
19:32As far as the drugs were concerned, we didn't know what they were and we had to take them to VIFM to have them tested to give us some clarity as to what these drugs were and what they were used for.
19:45As the case grew, Laurie was communicating quite frequently and sending images of different medications and they weren't in English either.
19:57There were sort of pictures of bottles and drugs all in Chinese and I used Google Translate literally on my phone to sort of try and work out what on earth are these drugs?
20:07And I'll never forget the moment when one of them just sort of popped up in the translator and it was seviflurane.
20:15And that was sort of the penny drop moment for me.
20:18Oh my God, this is, this is anaesthesia.
20:21These drugs were being used to firstly render the victim sedated.
20:27The small plastic tubing and the syringes were actually being used to maintain the victim in an anaesthetised state.
20:35While the offending was occurring.
20:39The accused could sort of adjust the level of medication based on, you know, whether the victim was rousing or not.
20:46I mean, it's just, it's just incomprehensible. It's, it's, I mean, you're literally playing with death.
20:51We've never seen anything, anything like it.
20:56Over the next few weeks, we were getting back all the blood and urine test results for the cardiac arrest patient who'd set the investigation in motion.
21:06With those three mils of blood, some drugs did show up in the blood and the urine, and they were unusual.
21:13For example, midazolam, which can induce amnesia, so it causes forgetfulness.
21:20Lignocaine, which is also used for local anaesthesia.
21:23It's also sometimes used for inserting a urinary catheter in males as a numbing gel.
21:30We had to sort of be medical detectives, so that meant, for example, speaking on the phone to the nurses that were working the day that the victim came into hospital just to ensure that they hadn't used, you know, a male urinary catheter pack for any reason and that there was no lignocaine in the gel that they would have used to insert her catheter.
21:50And then we could sort of cross that off as a potential source.
21:56What followed was a slow process of elimination.
21:59I checked hundreds of pages of the victim's medical records to exclude alternative sources for the drugs that had been identified.
22:08To be able to say at the end of that hand on heart the most likely thing is that the accused has administered these drugs to this victim without her knowledge.
22:16Had she not been in hospital when she had a cardiac arrest, she would have died.
22:24It's as simple as that.
22:26The drugs that were identified, I mean, it's frightening.
22:30This was backyard anaesthesia.
22:31Someone without a medical degree outside of an operating theatre with breathing machines and medical teams.
22:39All the measures that we have in place when you administer anaesthesia.
22:44How did this happen under everyone's noses in plain sight?
22:47Who is Frank Hu?
22:54At the time we didn't know who Frank Hu was.
22:59His Chinese passport indicated he was born in China in 1984.
23:04I've heard multiple stories about his family.
23:08One that his dad was in the military.
23:10One that his dad worked for the Chinese equivalent of Vic Rhodes.
23:13One that his mother was the chief of Chinese police.
23:17I don't know what's true and what's false when it comes to his backstory.
23:21There were some facts we learned about him.
23:24Frank Hu came to Australia in early 2000s and finished his schooling at Taylors College in Melbourne.
23:29He got a degree in computer science from Deakin University.
23:35He established his own migration agency on Little Collins Street in 2016.
23:41And somewhere along the way he became an Australian citizen.
23:46He is an incredibly manipulative person.
23:50He had two wives and three girlfriends all at the same time.
23:55None of these women knew about each other.
23:57They were all under the impression that he was in a relationship with them and in a relationship with only them.
24:05When we executed the warrants on the building at Little Collins Street,
24:10we also executed warrants on the residential addresses that we had listed for Frank Hu in Melbourne.
24:15But before knocking on the doors, we spent a good deal of time examining the images and photos of the victims that we had on fire.
24:24The original report came from the Australian Border Force who had provided Victoria Police with images from the offender's phone when he returned to Australia after a trip to China.
24:37When the search warrant was executed in 2019, the investigators realised that the person who answered the door, they recognised her from the images that were on that phone and realised that she was one of those victims.
24:53That was quite unsettling because they did realise it's likely the offender was offending against people in his own home, potentially his partner, and that would have gradually dawned on the investigators as they entered that residence.
25:06As well as three girlfriends, we discovered that he had two wives, and none of them knew anything about one another.
25:16They provided some valuable insights.
25:19He boasted, as well as being a migration agent, he was also a pilot in the Royal Australian Air Force.
25:26They were of the belief that he lived on base at the Air Force, and that's why he didn't come home every night.
25:38I've spoken to the Defence Force, confirmed that he had no involvement at all.
25:45He is an incredible liar who seemed to lie for no reason a lot of the time.
25:51When we executed search warrants on his office, we seized six phones, two laptops, and a hard drive computer.
26:06There was thousands of images and videos.
26:12The images alone, 1,949 and 232 videos.
26:19And I spent days combing through his computers and his phones to try and identify who they were.
26:30Our team was able to help Laurie with that, to take some of that burden,
26:34because it is a really onerous thing for investigators going through all of those images and all of those videos.
26:42That is a very big mental impost on one person.
26:45The worst thing for Laurie would be for him to go home each day feeling overwhelmed.
26:51But it's also important to make sure this person was held to account because, as investigators, that is our focus.
26:57So, in total, I identified 15 women who were in those images.
27:06Ten of those provided statements to police and were willing to give evidence against Frank.
27:10In order for Laurie and his team to prosecute this medically and forensically complex case in court, the evidence needed to be watertight.
27:23We ended up using hair toxicology.
27:27When you're looking at offences that have occurred months to years prior, the drug is actually absorbed into the hair shaft through the follicle from the bloodstream.
27:38It's not perfect, but it's a really useful tool in a case like this where we had nothing else to go from.
27:47So, Laurie coordinated a hair clinic and he'd organised to have the victims come in.
27:54We had an appointment schedule, one after the other, and we took hair samples from each of the victims willing to participate.
28:01The good news is, while it was incredibly complicated, we were able to obtain what was required to assist Laurie and his team in compiling their brief of evidence for court.
28:16When I first met with Frank, it was for a job, a receptionist job.
28:31I didn't work for him for a very long time.
28:46In the beginning, I trusted him, and I trusted him a lot because I was new to Australia.
28:53But after a certain period of time, I noticed he was like getting angry over very small things, and even to his clients.
29:05At the end, I didn't trust him at all.
29:08I was scared of Frank.
29:10I remember he offered me hot chocolate.
29:16I just drank the hot chocolate and I fell asleep.
29:27I woke up after a very long time nap.
29:33I felt weak.
29:35Something was wrong.
29:37I went to the hospital like I was taken by ambulance, and they did do several chats.
29:48When police first told me that Frank has been drugging and assaulting people, I was not shocked.
29:56I was only shocked when police asked me to identify myself from a bunch of photos of the videos because there was a lot of photos and videos.
30:05I had to search in the police station for like one to two hours to identify myself.
30:14There was heaps of them.
30:16The police asked me to do the hair test.
30:19So Detective Shanahan drove me to a test center, and they took samples of my hair and they tested if there was any residue left in my system.
30:34Even after quite a long time, they still found something in my system.
30:39Looking back then, I believe Frank is a very calculated person.
30:47To be honest, I wish I'd never met him.
30:50Never met him.
30:55A revealing insight into the true character of Frank Hu was discovered.
31:00With his membership of a vile Chinese website.
31:03It was a fetish website in which there was images and videos of predominantly women who were unconscious, all in a state of undress, that were being sexually interfered with.
31:21Frank Hu had uploaded images and videos that he had taken himself in order to share with other users.
31:27One of the interesting posts was he spoke about the drugs and how to use them to offend against women.
31:37The amount you need to use and the life the drug has on the victim is he spoke about playtime.
31:47Use any more than this amount of drugs, it will give you this amount of playtime, any more than that is a waste of time.
31:52So I thought that was a good indicator of how he saw his victims.
31:57Did that shock you when you discovered that?
32:00It didn't shock me, but not because I'm unshockable, but because I do know that these offenders are incredibly depraved and that there is actually a market for this.
32:10There is an audience online that are quite happy to watch this sort of revolting behaviour.
32:15Where are these other people and where do they live and who are they offending against?
32:19The chat rooms were not only being used to share conquests, but to educate others in how to do this.
32:30I just don't have words for the sort of human that he obviously is to have done this.
32:35At the committal proceeding there was only one victim called to give evidence.
32:50She did an amazing job.
32:52She was very firm under tough cross-examination, but she was really resolute as to what had happened.
33:01This victim had been offended against approximately 68 times and at no stage during any of those 68 occasions was she ever conscious.
33:14The evidence against Frank was very clear and honestly quite horrific.
33:20Was Frank Hu still saying he was not guilty?
33:26Yes, so he was contesting all the charges that were put to him.
33:30He wanted to go to trial. He wanted to fight it.
33:32The fact that he eventually agreed to plead guilty was due to the efforts of the Office of Public Prosecutions and his own lawyer.
33:43His lawyer indicated that if a jury saw those images and videos that they would convict him of war crimes.
33:50He pled guilty of multiple counts of rape, sexual assault, intentionally causing injury and recklessly causing serious injury.
34:02I don't believe that Frank Hu chose to plead guilty in any way to be kind to these victims.
34:19But more likely for him to receive a reduction in his sentence.
34:24The offender received at least a 30% discount on his sentence for pleading guilty.
34:34An immigration agent who used his position to drug and assault women has been sentenced to nearly 30 years behind bars.
34:55This is Frank Hu, guilty of preying on women.
34:59You surreptitiously administered dangerous drugs to the victims in order to incapacitate them, rendering them defenceless and vulnerable.
35:08Your conduct was cold, calculated and repetitive.
35:12He was handed a 29 year sentence and will need to serve at least another 18 years behind bars before becoming eligible for parole.
35:20The migration agent committed nearly 70 rapes and almost 20 sexual assaults.
35:24One woman ended up in intensive care after suffering a cardiac arrest.
35:32If Frank put a little bit more powder in her drink, she probably wouldn't survive.
35:41It's very lucky she's still alive.
35:43If I reported him earlier, if I had been more brave, the poor girl probably wouldn't need to suffer.
35:54That's part of the reason I don't particularly feel proud of myself.
35:58All of the victims, whether or not they participated in the criminal justice process or not, were just so brave in enduring what they did.
36:13I mean, they simply accepted a job.
36:15And they went to their first day of work.
36:23There was an element of trust Frank had over these women based upon his position as an older male, as a boss.
36:33They felt that they couldn't say no.
36:37He was in a similar position to an uncle or somebody who they felt like they had to do what they were told, even if it didn't feel right, which enabled him to continue his offending.
36:48It was the perfect crime because you have a victim who doesn't know that they've been a victim.
37:00A victim who has been administered, without their knowledge, a medication designed to cause amnesia.
37:07One of the most chilling factors for me, as a doctor, was seeing how many times the victims actually came to the attention of hospital emergency departments.
37:21And often they were brought in by the offender, who then would provide a narrative to the treating doctors and nurses for what had happened.
37:31Multiple victims attended very well-known hospitals around Melbourne and regional Victoria.
37:39And not once was toxicology or a sexual offence even sort of queried.
37:45As a medical doctor, that was such an eye-opener for me.
37:49If there was a patient that was a bit unwell or a bit drowsy or, you know, and had a lovely boss there telling me, you know, she was sick at work, you know, would I have questioned it?
37:59You know, I probably wouldn't have.
38:02In the event that something just doesn't sit right with you, just think toxicology.
38:07Maybe the answer might be there.
38:12Dominique Pellico pretended he was a loving family man, when in fact, he was a sexual deviant.
38:19His victim was his unsuspecting wife, Giselle, who he repeatedly, secretly drugged and then raped.
38:26But then Pellico also recruited more than 70 other men to join him.
38:32It is very similar to the Giselle Pellico case, where they were entitled to feel safe.
38:43They were with somebody who they trusted.
38:45This person chose to behave like this.
38:48This person chose to act in a criminal way.
38:51There's nothing these women have done to deserve this.
38:56Since this has occurred, we're hearing about other cases overseas.
38:59And I think that shows the frightening power of these drugs.
39:07So through global information sharing, drug facilitated sexual assault is just hitting a new level of sophistication.
39:15Taking in this case, someone having a cardiac arrest for it all to actually come to the surface.
39:26I'm so glad I took that call.
39:28I've never worked so hard in my life as I did for the months preparing all that information.
39:33I was pregnant at the time and you just think, you know, if that was my daughter overseas, you know, and something like this happened to her.
39:41You just hope that she managed to cross paths with a Laurie Shanahan.
39:46Both Laurie and I were somewhat junior in the hierarchy of things at the time.
39:52And both grew significantly through this case.
39:55The dedication that he showed, which was just so infectious, is really one of the key things that led to such a satisfying outcome, I think, yeah.
40:06Could further charges be brought against Frank who?
40:09We do know that there's a lot of women who've been offended against, who were not able to be identified conclusively,
40:17who did not provide a statement, so whose matters weren't proceeded with at court.
40:20If people came forward now, we would absolutely take a statement from them and we would definitely consider further charges against Frank who?
40:30I'm proud that this person is not in the community.
40:36This was someone who was not going to stop offended against international students from China.
40:42It's not every day you charge a serial rapist and get a conviction of 29 years.
40:51I know he's got 29 years to be rehabilitated, but I think he'll need all 29.
40:58We'll need all 29.
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