Sex crime survivors slam ‘sweetheart deal' for serial rapist doctor
- Dignity 4Patients
- Jul 25
- 4 min read
By Chris Glorioso- NBC New York- 25/07/2025 - [Zhi Alan Cheng]- [New York, US]
A group of sex crime survivors says Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz went too easy on a serial rapist doctor who has pleaded guilty to recording video as he sexually abused or assaulted multiple unconscious women.
Last month, Dr. Zhi Alan Cheng, 35, pleaded guilty to four counts of rape and three counts of sexual abuse, a small fraction of the more than 50 sex crime charges he faced in a series of indictments that could have landed him in prison for life, had he been convicted at trial.
In exchange for the guilty pleas, the DA’s office is agreeing to seek a prison sentence of 24 years, meaning Cheng could be released from prison before he turns 60.
“He is getting off light. He can kind of rebuild his life because he’s fairly young,” said one of Cheng’s survivors, who asked for her identity to be withheld. "You have this obligation to victims of crime and you’re just letting people off lightly like this. Why?"
Nicholas Liakas, an attorney who represents four women who are all willing to testify that Cheng drugged and sexually violated them, said his clients are collectively asking the judge to reject the Queens plea deal.
“I don’t think the public has been fully served by this, for lack of a better term, sweetheart deal,” Liakas said. “You have someone who is a predator filming themselves committing heinous acts on the public. If that is a case you’re concerned about losing, then I don’t know what kind of case you’d be willing to try!”
Katz declined the I-Team’s request for an interview and did not answer specific questions about the agreement to drop dozens of criminal charges, including nine counts of predatory sex assault, each of which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Her office did provide a written statement defending the plea deal and insisting every victim in the indictment was initially content with the plea when contacted by prosecutors.
“Zhi Cheng is a predator with a medical degree who was responsible for some of the most egregious conduct we have ever seen committed by someone who took the Hippocratic oath,” wrote Brendan Brosh, a Queens DA spokesperson. “Our investigators and prosecutors spent hundreds of hours painstakingly reviewing thousands of files to build a strong case against this defendant which resulted in a plea that includes a substantial prison sentence.”
In his guilty plea, Cheng waived his right to appeal and admitted he video-recorded himself raping or sexually abusing seven women, including hospital patients at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Queens.
He also entered what’s called an "Alford plea," to one count of sexual abuse related to another hospital patient. An Alford plea is an admission that he would likely be found guilty at trial, even though the defendant maintains his innocence.
But those eight survivors were not the only women Cheng was accused of sexually violating.
When the charges were first announced two years ago, DA Katz said her office was also in possession of other videos extracted from Cheng’s digital devices, which appear to show the doctor sexually assaulting several women who had not yet been identified. At the time, Katz asked for tips from the public, noting metadata on the videos suggested those unknown women were assaulted or abused in locations including Manhattan, Westchester County, Las Vegas, in and around San Francisco, and in Thailand.
The Queens plea agreement, as discussed in court, contains no requirement that Cheng tell what he knows about those videos. The District Attorney also declined to answer questions about those videos.
“There are a lot more women, and I think he deserves more years,” said one of Cheng’s victims who was sexually abused on video while unconscious in a hospital exam room.
In describing the plea agreement to Judge Ushir Pandit-Durant in June, Assistant DA Brianne Richards did not address the additional videos found on Cheng’s devices.
Jeffrey Einhorn, Cheng’s defense attorney, said he could not address questions about other alleged sex crimes captured on his client’s digital devices.
“With regard to any uncharged crimes, we can’t comment on them,” Einhorn said.
Also missing from Cheng’s guilty plea in court was any mention of how his victims became so sedated that he was able to sexually violate them. According to the indictment, Cheng often used hospital-grade sedatives, including propofol and sevoflourane, to render his victims unconscious. But the plea agreement did not appear to force the doctor to say where or how he got the drugs.
Liakas believes that omission tends to serve New-York Presbyterian Hospital Queens, the target of a civil lawsuit he filed, alleging Cheng’s pattern of sex crimes was enabled by lax oversight at the hospital.
“I’m having trouble understanding why this deal was made,” Liakas said. “You have a hammer over this person’s head, all of the evidence you could imagine in a criminal case, and you have it hovering over him, and they really didn’t get much in return.”
New York- Presbyterian has long said the hospital fired Dr. Cheng as soon as staff learned of the criminal investigation. When asked if any hospital representative discussed the plea deal with prosecutors, a spokesperson sent the I-Team the following statement:
“While we have cooperated fully with the investigation from the beginning, we were not involved in any aspect of the plea negotiations. The District Attorney’s office expertly led the effort to bring him to justice.”
Likewise, the Queens DA insisted that prosecutors never discussed the parameters of any potential plea deal with representatives of New York- Presbyterian in advance of Dr. Cheng pleading guilty in court.
If you have been affected by any of the issues raised in this article and were abused in state run medical and health facilities, you can contact Dignity4Patients, whose helpline is open Monday to Thursday, 10am to 4pm.