She Said a Student Assaulted Her. Now 'Dozens' More Emerge

UW junior Alec Cook is set to be charged with 30 criminal counts of sexual assault—and there could be more
By Jenn Gidman,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 26, 2016 12:20 PM CDT
She Said a Student Assaulted Her. Now 'Dozens' More Emerge
Alec Cook   (Dane County Jail)

Last week Alec Cook was accused of sexually assaulting an acquaintance. But the University of Wisconsin-Madison student's problems have since become much worse after several other women emerged in the days following with similar charges, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. Now the 20-year-old is expected to be slammed during a Thursday court appearance with almost a dozen felony sexual assault charges and 15 misdemeanor ones, as well as charges related to strangulation and false imprisonment—30 criminal counts in total regarding four women, the Journal adds. And a Madison Police search warrant notes that "dozens of females have come forward wanting to speak about unknown acts related to Cook."

A Madison Police investigator says the junior from Minnesota, now under "emergency suspension" at the college, kept at least one notebook that documented how he groomed and stalked the women, including listing their interests and what he planned to do with them, with statements including "kill" among them, per the Minneapolis Star Tribune. All told, investigators think Cook has been committing these crimes with increasing aggressiveness since March 2015. Cook's lawyer, meanwhile, says the reports are nothing more than a "character assassination" and compares the entries allegedly found in Cook's notebook to his own time as an English lit major in college, when "every single short story could be interpreted 12 ways." (A frat's initiation process reportedly including drugging and raping women.)

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