Alec Cook, a University of Wisconsin student, is expected to be charged with multiple counts related to alleged sexual assaults after he was arrested last week when a 20-year-old woman reportedly told authorities he attacked her at his apartment earlier this month.
Dane County district attorney Ismael Ozanne told WISC-TV that the counts will include allegations from other women who have come forward since police arrested Cook. The student was arrested last Friday after the first woman alleged that he attacked her on Oct. 12, WISC-TV reported.
Court documents showed, according to the television station, that the charges that will likely be filed Thursday include four counts of second-degree sexual assault, three counts of misdemeanor battery, strangulation, and false imprisonment.
That woman alleged that Cook repeatedly raped her for more than two hours and strangled her to the point of near unconsciousness, WISC-TV said.
Two other victims reported separate incidents of sexual assault, one alleging that Cook inappropriately touched her in a University of Wisconsin class on at least 15 different occasions, university of police said in a report, according to the television station.
The Wisconsin State Journal reported Tuesday that Cook, 20, was suspended from the university when the allegations were made. Assistant district attorney Colette Sampson said Cook kept a notebook that allegedly detailed the grooming and stalking of women.
Sampson said, according to the newspaper, that a fourth woman has also come forward and two others have contacted police about Cook, so more charges could be added.
The State Journal reported that Court Commissioner Jason Hanson initially declined to set bail on Monday. The newspaper said that while Sampson asked for $250,000, Cook's attorneys' argued that he had no criminal history and should be released on a signature bond.
"Since the reporting of the first victim in news coverage, we've had numerous victims come forward," Sampson said, adding that authorities found Cook's notebook while executing a search warrant at his apartment, according to the State Journal.
Chris Van Wagner, one of Cook's attorneys, suggested that the "media firestorm" about the case was the cause of more alleged victims coming forward, the newspaper noted.
"Much of what has been reported on there has been, for lack of a better expression, character assassination of my client, calling him everything under the sun, calling him a 'dangerous alpha male,'" Van Wagner said, per the State Journal.
"Those things are horrible things to be accused of, but more importantly, that has prompted a lot of people to apparently go back and re-examine their relationships with him and conclude, whether accurately or not, that they were the victim of a crime," he continued.
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