University of Southern California grad student charged with drugging and raping multiple women

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University of Southern California grad student charged with drugging and raping multiple women

2025-10-17 03:27 Last Updated At：03:30

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A University of Southern California graduate student who police say is a serial sexual predator has been charged with drugging and raping multiple women as investigators look for additional victims, Los Angeles authorities said.

Sizhe Weng, a 30-year-old Chinese national also known as Steven Weng, was arrested Aug. 28, though the district attorney and police just released statements about the case on Wednesday.

Weng has pleaded not guilty to eight felony counts including forcible rape and sodomy by controlled substance or anesthesia, according to the LA County District Attorney's Office.

Weng was held without bail and could not be reached for comment. A lawyer for him could not be found, and the LA Public Defender’s Office didn’t respond to an email asking if one of its attorneys is representing Weng.

USC said in a statement Wednesday that it is cooperating fully with police and has taken steps to bar Weng from campus.

“Providing a safe environment for learning, teaching, and research is our top priority,” the statement said.

Detectives began investigating in January after receiving information from authorities about a potential suspect who plied women with drugs before raping them in Los Angeles, police said in a statement.

"Evidence was recovered at Weng’s residence that corroborated his involvement in drug facilitated sexual assaults of multiple victims dating back to 2021 and continuing into 2025," the police statement said. Investigators said Weng put unspecified incapacitating drugs in his victims' food or drinks.

Weng first enrolled as a doctoral student at USC in 2021, prosecutors said.

District Attorney Nathan Hochman urged any other potential victims to contact the police department's Robbery-Homicide Division.

“We want every victim to know that their voices matter and we will fight to ensure you are heard,” Hochman said in a statement.

If convicted as charged, Weng faces 25 years to life plus 56 years in state prison, the DA's office said.

From devotion to rebellion, AP photos recorded Asia's many tones in 2025

A continent as large as Asia rarely speaks in a single tone.

Its 2025 played out in polyphony — with chords of devotion, chaos, spectacle and fatigue — each a reminder of how much can, and does, coexist.

AP photographs, taken from the Himalayas to the Java Sea, recorded all of them.

Some moments are quiet.

From above, the Rohingya refugee camps at Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar appear as calm, tidy rows — a quiet geometry that masks the dirge of a people in exile. In the Indonesian capital of Jakarta, a dove settles on a soldier’s hat during an independence day ceremony. Bright red powder drifts like a quiet fog as a girl celebrates the Hindu festival of Holi in Mumbai, India.

Vibrant motion cut through elsewhere.

Traditional dancers in West Java, Indonesia, prepare to head out, a bright dragon head framed in the doorway. Migratory birds swirl above the Yamuna River as people in a boat scatter feed across the Indian river dawn. A humanoid robot pounds down a racetrack in Beijing, one of many chrome and circuitry competitors chasing the 1,500-meter finish.

In politics, ceremony and upheaval rang out.

Lawmakers in Tokyo applaud Japan's first female prime minister. A young woman in Seoul, South Korea, waits through the night near the Constitutional Court, waiting to hear if a president would fall after declaring martial law. In Kathmandu, Nepal, a protester roars against corruption, clutching a captured police shield as if willing the world to change.

And woven into the year were the harsh notes of disasters.

In Bangkok, a high rise that collapsed after a major earthquake in Myanmar looms over rescuers moving in a thin line below. In Ahmedabad, India, a woman wails at a the funeral of a plane crash, her grieving body held upright only by the hands of those gathering to steady her. In Hong Kong, two grey-haired men stand shoulder to shoulder, watching in horror as a Hong Kong high-rise burns against the night sky.

Laborers huddle together under a police barricade in Delhi and sipped tea while sheltering from rain. A couple share a wedding kiss in a Filipino church inundated with floodwaters.

Together, they showed how life persisted despite it all, quietly stitching itself back together, frame by frame.

Photo editing by Yirmiyan Arthur and Courtney Dittmar.