Two Men Charged Over Sexual Assault of Trans Woman on UW-Madison Campus

This story describes charges of violence and sexual assault against a transgender woman. Details are graphic.Two men were charged on September 1 for allegedly strangling and sexually assaulting a transgender woman on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus over the weekend, in the early morning of August 29. In a statement to the UW-Madison Police Department obtained by local ABC affiliate WKOW, the woman — unnamed for her protection but identified as trans by the Wisconsin State Journal — alleged that the men, Yorfred H. Marcano Gutierrez, 31, and Arturo R. Santos Albujas, 27, asked her to accompany them to their boat on a university campus pier on Lake Mendota. She says she met the pair on State Street somewhere around 3 a.m. to 4 a.m. on Saturday, August 29, a pedestrian corridor frequented by university students in downtown Madison that leads straight into UW-Madison’s campus, when they approached her. Per the UW-Madison Police Department, neither the woman nor the men are affiliated with the university.The woman told police that she was reluctant but went with the men to Goodspeed Family Pier near Alumni Park, a docking access point opened in 2013 that is frequented by students. Once they arrived, she says she saw there was no boat and became concerned and tried to leave. She said that the men then pushed her to the ground, per the report, and that Albujas grabbed her by the neck, ripped out her hair extensions, and threw them into the lake. Then, she alleges the pair tore off her clothes before they began hitting her.The woman says in the report that Gutierrez then began strangling her to the point that she thought she would die, before dragging her towards Albujas to try to force her to perform sexual acts on him, leaving scratches across her arms and legs. “We could literally kill you, throw you in the lake and just leave,” she says they told her.One eyewitness to the incident called the police and said she saw the pair “being very handsy towa