UW student released on bail
Man accused in sex assaults
A University of Wisconsin-Madison senior accused of sexually assaulting six women and groping, stalking or sexually preying on four others was on his way home to Minnesota on Friday after a Dane County Circuit Court judge agreed to reduce his bail to $100,000.
Alec Cook, 20, a business major from Edina, was released from the Dane County Jail when his father delivered a $100,000 cashier’s check after his bail was reduced from $200,000 during a Friday morning hearing.
Conditions of Cook’s release include: No alcohol, drugs or weapons; no contact with any of the complainant witnesses in the criminal complaint; general internet access but no social media or dating sites; and he can only be in Wisconsin and Minnesota (his family has a cabin in northern Wisconsin). He cannot be in Dane County without a parent or his attorneys, and only for court appearances or a university disciplinary hearing, which hasn’t yet been set.
Cook, who was placed under emergency suspension and banned from campus in October, faces 21 charges, including six new charges filed Wednesday.
His preliminary hearing on the charges has been set for 1 p.m. Jan. 20, and his attorneys at that time will seek to dismiss some of the charges, according to one of his attorneys, Jessa Nicholson Goetz.
Cook was charged in October in a 15-count sexual assault case involving five women. One more woman is now accusing him of sexually assaulting her, and four women allege disorderly conduct or that he stalked them on campus, according to an amended criminal complaint filed Wednesday in Dane County Circuit Court.
He is accused of sexually assaulting or groping female students he met at parties, campus recreation centers or through classes, including a ballroom dance class and a psychology experiment. After initial charges were filed against him in October, word spread of police finding a black leather notebook allegedly detailing Cook’s stalking and grooming techniques, and more students came forward with allegations.
The new charges filed this week involve a woman accusing him of stalking her at a college library over several months; a woman who says he stalked her from a business class they were both in; a woman who says she had never seen him before he groped her on a sidewalk in front of thousands of students and followed her as she walked home; a woman who worked at a recreational facility on campus and accused him of grabbing, twirling and dipping her; and a woman who said Cook approached her at Festival Foods and asked her personal and sexually suggestive questions she considered “very upsetting” and “disturbing.”