An anesthesiologist who drugged and sexually assaulted personal acquaintances and patients at a hospital in Queens, videotaping many of the attacks, was sentenced on Thursday to 24 years in prison.
“Zhi Alan Cheng committed a series of heinous acts against women,” the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said in a news release announcing the sentencing. “He did so both as a private citizen, sexually assaulting women who were his intimate partners, and as a doctor, sexually assaulting vulnerable patients who came to the hospital in need of help.”
Mr. Cheng, 34, pleaded guilty in June to four counts of first-degree rape and three counts of first-degree sexual abuse. He also entered a plea, in which he formally pleaded guilty to one count of sexual abuse while maintaining his innocence.
The grim details of Mr. Cheng’s pattern of abuse came to light in stages, after an acquaintance notified police that she had found videos of him assaulting her and other women. Mr. Cheng was arrested in December 2022. A police search of his home later found digital storage devices containing dozens of other recordings of him sexually abusing unconscious female acquaintances and hospital patients.
Mr. Cheng also raped a woman he met on a dating app, prosecutors said. He recorded videos of the assault in which a small brown bottle was on his bed, and prosecutors said they had recovered a similar bottle from his apartment that contained a powerful anesthetic.
The police also found drugs in the home including LSD, ketamine, fentanyl and powerful anesthetics typically used in surgeries.
Mr. Cheng was later accused of taking advantage of hospital patients in his care. He was accused of filming himself while on duty at NewYork-Presbyterian Queens medical center in 2021 as he groped a 37-year-old patient as she lay unconscious. In another episode, a 19-year-old woman said Mr. Cheng had performed a rectal exam that was unnecessary, then injected an “unknown substance” into her intravenous line and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors and her lawyer said.
The woman, using a pseudonym, sued the hospital in June 2023, accusing the center of failing to intervene and conspiring to cover up her assault after she informed staff at the hospital that Mr. Cheng had given her a painful injection that made her lose consciousness.
The medical center fired Mr. Cheng in December 2022, and he was stripped of his license to practice medicine. He was eventually charged with more than 50 criminal counts including rape, sexual abuse, assault, misdemeanor drug possession and unlawful surveillance.
After his prison sentence, handed down by Justice Ushir Pandit-Durant in State Supreme Court in Queens, he will be subject to post-release supervision for 10 years and will be required to register as a sex offender.
Christopher Maag is a reporter covering the New York City region for The Times.
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