Bicycle path rapist sentenced to 40 years in prison

She faced her attacker, Aidison Yang, 43, at his sentencing Friday on three counts of sexual abuse with a deadly weapon. Dane County District Court Judge Ellen Berz sentenced Yang to 20 years in prison, followed by 20 years of extended probation.

Yang will be in his 80s before he can be released from the Wisconsin correctional system. Yang must also pay $12,278.95 in restitution plus administrative costs.

In delivering the verdict, Berz spoke of both the suffering of the victim and the impact the attack had on the community. For many women, some of whom wrote their own statements to the court, the then-unidentified attack was a specter lurking in public spaces that were supposed to be safe.

“This was so unusual for Madison, Wisconsin, in 2005 that it literally sent shivers throughout the community,” Berz said.

Yang was living in Eagan, Minnesota, when he was arrested in February 2023. Madison police learned that the FBI, using its Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), had found a match between DNA collected from the victim after the attack and Yang’s.

According to court documents, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student was riding her bike on the path to a coffee shop around 8 p.m. on October 15, 2005, when Yang caught up with her, pulled out a knife and said, “You’d better come with me” and “Don’t scream or I’ll kill you.” He then dragged her behind some trees and attacked her.

Yang was 24 at the time and lived with his parents on Madison’s Far East Side. A jury found him guilty on February 22.

On Friday, the victim spoke about the psychological impact of Yang’s attack – a delayed master’s degree, an obsessive need to know the outcome in every social situation, constant passive suicidal thoughts. She began her statement with five words from Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale”:

“Pain makes your world small,” she said.

She remembered lying in the bushes where Yang had left her, wondering who would find her body.

“I was sure I was going to die alone and in agony at the age of 22,” she said. “I thought it would be several days before anyone noticed I was missing. I hadn’t spoken to anyone that day. Not my family, not my friends, not anyone. I couldn’t believe my life was going to end this way.”

Defense attorney Christopher Van Wagner told the court that Yang had been a father figure to his ex-fiancée’s two children. However, the judge noted that the relationship ended in November after Yang tried unsuccessfully to convince both his ex-fiancée and his sister to lie about the nature of his relationship with his ex-fiancée, claiming the couple were “culturally married.”

“Mr. Yang tried to manipulate the case, he tried to get a person to lie for his own benefit,” Berz said.

The defense also noted that no other sexual assault charges were brought against Yang in the 17 years between the bike lane attack and his arrest. He was charged with driving under the influence in Wisconsin in 2010 and in Minnesota in 2020. He was also charged with giving a police officer a false name after a traffic stop in Minnesota in 2021.

“We have someone here who continues to commit crimes and lie to the police throughout his adult life,” Berz said.

Berz emphasized the victim’s resilience in the face of trauma and the courage it took to not only pursue education, therapy and relationships after the attack, but also to testify during the trial.

Cyclists and pedestrians will find neither a memorial bench nor a plaque bearing the name of the graduate student who was attacked there in 2005 on the bike path near Eastwood Drive. Nor have the victim’s relatives and friends picked up T-shirts with her face on them or burnt-out candle stubs from a vigil.

That’s because she survived.

The 40-year-old works as a professor outside of Wisconsin. She and her husband will fly home in the next few days.

Yang is sent to prison, where he must spend the next twenty years working to pay the compensation he owes her.