Man drugs, assaults and films seven women

A Madison man has been charged with 62 felonies accusing him of drugging and assaulting seven women, many of them co-workers.

Madison police began investigating 28-year-old Brian Stowe after a 17-year-old girl reported in October that she had been drugged, sexually assaulted and photographed over a three-hour period. They searched Stowe’s apartment in November and have been working since then to identify women seen in pictures and videos on his computer and digital storage media.

A criminal complaint filed Monday in Dane County Circuit Court lists 10 victims, although no charges pertain to two of them. Stowe also has been charged with possessing nude pictures of an eighth woman that allegedly were taken after she passed out during an out-of-state trip in 2010.

None of the women knew what had happened to them while they were asleep, and most cried when police showed them the photographs and videos, the complaint said. One woman said she felt “disgusted, embarrassed and betrayed” after seeing the images, it said.

Another woman told police she was “really freaked out” because she didn’t know the pictures and videos existed, the complaint said. She thought they had been taken in 2009 at a friend’s home in Verona, where she had been drinking.

Another woman, shown a video of herself taken in 2011, asked, “That’s … that’s on Stowe’s computer?”

The Associated Press does not normally identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

Stowe was arrested May 31, while at work in Verona. He has since lost his job. A spokeswoman for his former employer declined to comment because of the ongoing police investigation.

Stowe, who has dual U.S. and British citizenship, has posted $527,000 bail and surrendered his British passport, the Wisconsin State Journal reported.

Court Commissioner Todd Meurer said he considered Stowe a flight risk because “this guy’s got a pretty good chance of being convicted of everything and spending a lot of time in prison, maybe the rest of his life.”

Stowe’s lawyer, Dennis Coffey of Milwaukee, declined to comment.

In all, Stowe has been charged with 33 counts of second-degree sexual assault, 27 counts of capturing an image of nudity without consent and two counts of possessing a recording of nudity without consent. Each sexual assault charge is punishable with up to 40 years of combined prison and extended supervision. The other charges each carry up to 3 ½ years of prison and extended supervision.

(Home page image courtesy Shutterstock)

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