As a star cadet at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., Caleb Suh seemed to have it all.
He was near the top of his class and had his eyes set on a career in public health, with a passion for addressing festering inequities in the medical system while promoting diversity and inclusion.
But Mr. Suh was facing what he saw as a problem in early 2022. He had been dating another cadet at West Point and had gotten her pregnant. She wanted to bring the pregnancy to term; he did not.
This year, Mr. Suh told a federal judge that had given her a drink spiked with Xanax. When she became incapacitated, he shoved medical abortion pills into her vagina and mouth. He had gotten the pills from a pharmacy while pretending to be her.
Hours later, the woman was violently bleeding. She called 911 and was taken to a hospital, where she had a miscarriage.
The harrowing details of that night were described in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, accusing Mr. Suh of assault and battery.
The trajectories of the two cadets appear to have diverged after that night. The woman, identified in the suit as Jane Doe, struggled to move on with her life after the traumatic episode, according to her suit, while Mr. Suh seemed to flourish as he pursued a career in public health at elite institutions.
But in June 2026, Mr. Suh was charged with one count of assault within a maritime and territorial jurisdiction. He pleaded guilty, and federal prosecutors have asked him to be sentenced to around two years in prison.
While awaiting sentencing, however, Mr. Suh has been allowed to continue his education. In October, Mr. Suh asked the judge in his case, Philip M. Halpern, to push his sentencing to January, citing a desire to finish his academic term at Columbia, as well as complete a program aimed at rehabilitating felons. Federal prosecutors did not object.
Judge Halpern granted Mr. Suh’s request.
A representative for West Point did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesman for the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia, where Mr. Suh is studying, declined to comment. Thomas Kenniff, a lawyer for Mr. Suh, said he would not comment on any ongoing ligation.
Columbia was unaware of Mr. Suh’s criminal conviction before The New York Times informed the university of it, according to a person with knowledge of Mr. Suh’s status who was granted anonymity to discuss a matter involving a current student. The university is taking “swift action,” the person noted. Applicants to the school are not required to disclose prior criminal convictions or charges, the person said.
At the time of the crime, Mr. Suh was competing to become the first captain of West Point, an honor earned by the top cadet in each graduating class, a federal prosecutor said at his plea hearing in June.
In March 2022, Mr. Suh and Jane Doe broke up. In May, she reported her experience on that night to the Army Criminal Investigation Division at West Point, according to her lawsuit. It is not clear what came of that investigation.
Mr. Suh would attend multiple Ivy League institutions, presenting himself as a champion of public health and launching an organization aimed at addressing systemic inequalities in America’s health care system.
Over the next four years, Mr. Suh graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, where he was a member of the school’s Center for Health Equity. He called himself an “educator committed to diversity, equity and inclusion,” according to his directory page. Cornell did not respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Suh was also a research coordinator at Cornell’s medical school. He co-founded an organization that sought to address health disparities through advocacy, according to its website.
Following his graduation from Cornell this year, Mr. Suh received a scholarship to attend Columbia for a master’s degree at the Mailman School.
Russell Kornblith, a lawyer representing Jane Doe, said that any parent would be “haunted” by the facts of his client’s case.
“Our client was committed to carrying this pregnancy to term, and it was taken from her,” Mr. Kornblith said in an interview. “And it was taken from her in a place where she should have been safe.”
Mr. Suh and Jane Doe began dating in October 2020, according to the lawsuit. And by around January 2022, she learned that she was pregnant. He repeatedly pressured her to terminate the pregnancy, but she resisted, the suit said.
Mr. Suh even told Jane Doe that he “would commit suicide if she did not get an abortion,” according to the suit.
Unable to sway her, Mr. Suh hatched a plan to deceive her, according to the lawsuit.
During his guilty plea in June, Mr. Suh outlined the details of the plan to a judge in federal court in Manhattan, according to the suit.
Without Jane Doe’s knowledge, Mr. Suh created an account with an online pharmacy using her name, personal information and identification. He then used the account to purchase abortion medication and ship it to West Point. He also obtained Xanax through a friend, he said.
According to the suit, Mr. Suh impersonated Jane Doe on the pharmacy’s online forum and asked questions about taking the medication, including whether she would “feel the pills in my vagina.”
Then, he said, he put his scheme into action.
“I led her to believe that I had come to support her pregnancy when, in fact, I did not,” Mr. Suh told the judge, according to the lawsuit.
On Feb. 4, 2022, Mr. Suh visited Jane Doe in her barracks, where he encouraged her to drink what he called a “prenatal protein shake,” the suit said.
According to the lawsuit, Jane Doe became sick and fell asleep. At one point she woke up and felt “an odd sensation in her gums,” the suit said. She found two pills in her mouth and spit them out.
But Mr. Suh grabbed the pills and tried to put them back in her mouth, the lawsuit claimed, telling her “eat this, it’s good for you.” Mr. Suh then moved closer “and began touching her vagina” while she was incapacitated, the lawsuit said.
He left her at about 11 p.m. and returned to his barracks room.
At around midnight, Jane Doe woke up in pain, according to her lawsuit. She “vomited and experienced diarrhea,” and then stumbled into the bathroom, where she discovered that she was “profusely bleeding from her vagina,” the suit said.
Fearing a miscarriage, Jane Doe called Mr. Suh, according to the lawsuit. He did not respond.
Katherine Rosman contributed reporting.
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