When police searched his phone after the roommates went to police, they found a deleted photo he had taken of himself committing the first rape and a secretly recorded video of the second victim in her underwear. Police also identified other acquaintances of his who had been the unknowing victims of upskirt videos stored on his phone several years before the sexual assaults.
“Clearly, significant penalties are called for,” Judge Sharp said of the combined charges.
Cheung met the roommates for a night of drinking in Ponsonby in December 2020 before the trio went back to the roommates’ Onehunga home. Cheung was given blankets and allowed to sleep on the couch while the women went to their bedrooms.
The first woman, who had met Cheung that night through her roommate, awoke at 5.20am to find her clothes dishevelled and Cheung in her bed having sex with her. It took some time for the woman, who was described by police as still heavily intoxicated, to realise what was going on.
“Once she did, she got up out of bed, put pants on and screamed at Mr Cheung to get out,” police alleged in the summary of facts for the case. “[The victim] subsequently went back to sleep.”
Cheung then went into the other woman’s room “sometime later”, police said. She also awoke to find him in her bed, sexually abusing her.
“She shuffled away and told him ‘No’ multiple times,” police noted, explaining that she also went back to sleep after he left the room.
When later interviewed by police, Cheung said he had no memory of the allegations and insisted he would not have done those things.
During this week’s sentencing, defence lawyer David Reece noted that his client was also heavily intoxicated that night, having turned to heavy drinking after the recent death of his mother. He had no prior criminal history and his actions that night were out of character, Reece said, adding that Cheung now realised “the profoundly damaging effect on his victims”.
Reece acknowledged that Cheung’s late apology letter was unlikely to have a huge impact on the end sentence. However, he described it as “a step in the right direction”.
Judge Sharp agreed on both counts, saying the significance of the letter was that it might give the victims some solace that their recollections – after years of being challenged by the defendant as unreliable – were now uncontroverted.
Both women said during victim impact statements that they continued to suffer emotionally from Cheung’s crimes. The first said she had once been an “outgoing, confident, bold and independent young woman” but now had trouble trusting others and suffered flashbacks that could be triggered by things as simple as sexualised song lyrics.
“I felt ashamed, disgusted, confused and questioned my self-worth,” she said. “Following the incident, I wouldn’t sleep alone in my room for a week. I had to throw away all the bedding and replace it ...
“I always thought, as a confident and outgoing person, this could never happen to me.”
The second victim wept as she described her ongoing trauma. “The incident has left lasting scars,” she said.
A third woman, who was the subject of one of the upskirt videos, said it had made her hyper-vigilant, less confident and no longer comfortable wearing dresses.
Addressing the women directly, Judge Sharp expressed his sympathy and emphasised that they had done nothing wrong.
“They are all intelligent young women with a great deal of potential,” he said.
Meanwhile, he urged Cheung to enrol in as many sex offender programmes as he could while in prison, predicting that the Parole Board would take a dim view of any request for early release without such attempts at rehabilitation.
Craig Kapitan is an Auckland-based journalist covering courts and justice. He joined the Herald in 2021 and has reported on courts since 2002 in three newsrooms in the US and New Zealand.
