Speaking to reporters Thursday, the two lawyers maintained that all of the sexual assault allegations were the result of consensual sexual activity, and the complaint contains abundant references to consent between the women and Cook. Nicholson Goetz said she does not believe the improper touching by Cook during the dance class, as alleged in the complaint, ever happened.

“Our client has essentially been slaughtered by the social media image of him,” Van Wagner said. Now that he and Nicholson Goetz know what is in the complaint, he said, it’s evident that Cook is not stalking women on campus, did not keep stalking notebooks, and was not a “serial rapist.”

“There’s nothing to support the monster that exists in the minds of all of the people of UW-Madison,” Van Wagner told a crowd of reporters in the lobby of the Dane County Public Safety Building. “We believe that the contents of this criminal complaint ought to send you back to the people who pay attention to you with the message that their fear was unfounded, that there’s no serial stalker, that there’s no serial rapist. There are no bodies, there are no corpses, there is nobody who even said that they thought he was going to kill them.”

“Everything you have seen in the media about those topics is wrong,” Van Wagner said.

Cook’s lawyers also said that their client will likely remain in jail and not post bail at this point, in part because they fear for his safety if he is released. But they will revisit the issue once they know whether “the rest of the dust has settled, because so far all that’s settled is dust,” Van Wagner said.

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