By Lauren Mascarenhas, CNN
Updated 5:56 PM EDT, Tue August 8, 2023
A Queens doctor has been charged with drugging, raping and filming the sexual assaults of a string of women, including patients at the prominent New York hospital where he practiced, according to prosecutors.
Zhi Alan Cheng, who was first arrested and charged with rape in December, had 50 new counts brought against him Monday for sexually abusing three patients at New York-Presbyterian Queens hospital and raping three other women in his home, according to the Queens District Attorney’s office.
In addition to seven identified victims, prosecutors say they have video evidence showing there are at least six other victims assaulted across multiple cities and countries.
Cheng was initially arrested on December 27 and charged with drugging and raping a female acquaintance in his home in Queens. Now prosecutors say that the assaults weren’t limited to his home.
Cheng has pleaded not guilty to the new charges as well as the counts from the December arrest.
The new charges are a result of an investigation that began when that female acquaintance tipped off authorities that she found videos in Cheng’s home of him assaulting her and other women in December of last year, according to a statement from the DA’s office.
Evidence showed the young gastroenterologist was “a sexual predator of the absolute worst kind,” said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz, who called Cheng “a serial rapist, someone willing to not only violate his sacred professional oath and patients’ trust, but every standard of human decency.”
A search of Cheng’s home uncovered multiple videos of unconscious female hospital patients and female acquaintances, as well as drugs like propofol and sevoflurane, used in health care settings to sedate people, according to prosecutors.
Investigators also found narcotics, including fentanyl, ketamine and LSD, the DA’s office said.
The new charges include rape, unlawful surveillance and criminal possession of a controlled substance, according to the Queens district attorney.
“Dr. Cheng has pleaded not guilty to the charges and we intend to fight them,” Cheng’s attorney Jeffrey Lichtman told CNN in a written statement.
Since his arrest in December, Cheng has been held without bail and placed on suicide watch, at the request of the district attorney’s office, chief public information officer Frank Sobrino told CNN.
His next court date is set for September 19.
“The crimes committed by this individual are heinous, despicable, and a fundamental betrayal of our mission and our patients’ trust,” New York-Presbyterian said in a statement. “In December 2022, as soon as the District Attorney made us aware of allegations of sexual abuse against this individual, he was immediately placed off duty, banned from hospital property, and terminated.”
A string of ‘heinous’ assaults
Cheng received his medical license in May of 2020, according to records maintained by US Health and Human Services. The assaults started sometime that year, prosecutors say.
Videos show Cheng assaulting three separate hospital patients between March 2021 and May 2022, all of whom appear unconscious, prosecutors said. All three victims had one of their closed eyelids pulled open during the assault, according to the district attorney’s office.
Prosecutors described three separate victims who were assaulted or raped in Cheng’s apartment, all of whom have no memory of the events. In videos of two assaults, Cheng is seen handling a brown bottle resembling one seized from his apartment containing sevoflurane, an anesthetic sometimes used to put patients to sleep before surgery, the district attorney’s office said.
Those were the victims prosecutors have been able to identify. Additional videos show victims being assaulted at New York-Presbyterian Queens, at Cheng’s Queens apartment, and also at other locations in Westchester County, Manhattan, Las Vegas, San Francisco and Thailand, according to the DA’s office.
Katz is urging women who think they may have been victimized to contact her office’s Special Victims Bureau at (718) 286-6505 or SpecialVictims@queensda.org.
An alleged pattern of ignoring abuse complaints
One of the victims who Cheng allegedly assaulted at New York-Presbyterian Queens is suing the hospital system, saying it was aware that Cheng had sexually assaulted her and conspired to cover it up.
In June 2021, the 19-year-old Queens resident was admitted to the emergency room for severe pain caused by gallstones, where Cheng performed an unnecessary rectal exam, injected her with an unknown substance and assaulted her while she was unconscious, according to the complaint.
When she informed hospital staff about the injection that caused her to lose consciousness, the hospital conducted a lineup of male employees, and the victim identified Cheng as the man who injected her, according to the suit.
The hospital did not inform police about the incident or make any notes about the lineup, according to the complaint.
The suit also says that the hospital did not collect any forensic evidence, including robe or bedsheets, did not test the plaintiff’s blood to determine what she was injected with, or offer her sufficient and timely support services.
Cheng was not fired or suspended after the incident or being picked out of lineup.
“Unbelievably, on June 22, 2021 – after the hospital conducted the lineup and knew that Dr. Cheng had sexually assaulted the plaintiff – records indicate that he provided medical treatment and care to her while she was under sedation during surgery,” according to a statement by Liakas Law and Slater Slater Shulman, the law firms representing the victim.
When asked whether New York-Presbyterian had received any complaints about Cheng prior to prosecutors making the allegations known in December 2022, Angela Smith Karafazli, a senior media director for the hospital system, told CNN they had nothing additional to share.
The hospital system has a years-long pattern of “ignoring specific activity by doctors and in some cases, actual complaints from patients,” Adam Slater, founding and managing partner of Slater Slater Shulman, told CNN. Slater said his firm has brought previous suits against New York-Presbyterian for ignoring complaints about its doctors assaulting patients.
One of those doctors was Robert Hadden, a former Columbia University gynecologist who was sentenced in July to 20 years in prison for sexually assaulting his patients. Slater said he hopes to see the hospital system implement mandatory law enforcement reporting for patients complaining about any type of abuse.
New York-Presbyterian said it has reviewed its patient safety practices and implemented additional training for its staff.