Hank Nuwer, Author; Hazing Deaths Database

How to stop High School Hazing by Hank Nuwer, ABC News http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=90209&page=1#.UEJbRVTajoA

Here is the Minneapolis Star-Tribune link

Browerville tries to make sense of hazing, sex-assault case.  Article by reporter Pam Louwagie is exceptionally well sourced, well-written. Sept. 1, 2012–Moderator Hank Nuwer

Allegations that his teammates sexually assaulted other players last season have made life difficult in this central Minnesota town of 790, where rumors have been swirling for months.

Team members didn’t want anybody to get in trouble, the player said, but they wanted a stop to the acts, described in court papers as touching teammates mostly through their athletic shorts, sometimes holding them down, sometimes digitally penetrating them. Now three players have been charged with felonies and some students are embarrassed to wear their Browerville Tigers T-shirts in neighboring towns, careful to avoid inviting ridicule.

“Everybody knew that it was bad, but they didn’t think it would turn into something this big,” said the player, who didn’t want his name used. “All the kids want it to be over with.”

But as defense attorneys now allege that such assaults were part of a common culture of horseplay and hazing that’s gone on for years at the school, the case is only beginning. The town, meanwhile, regardless of what happens in court, is left figuring out what to make of it all and how to prevent it in the future.

Could widespread assaults have happened without any adults knowing? Or was it the work of a few bullies? In an age when such assaults are joked about on television and the Internet, were players confused about what is a crime?

“It makes it a little bit harder to wrap your head around,” said Julie Kapsch, of the nonprofit Hands of Hope, which advocates for sexual assault victims and others in Todd County. “I think one of the hardest things is the stigma out there … that boys will be boys.”

Cases of sexual assault-type hazing are popping up around the country more frequently, said Hank Nuwer, a journalism professor at Franklin College in Indiana who has written books on hazing.

Boys typically don’t talk about it because they’re ashamed and “don’t want their own sexuality questioned,” he said. Defendants are often allowed to plead to lesser crimes.

“The number of cases is astronomical,” Nuwer said. “The number of cases where people actually went to jail, I can cite them almost by memory.”

Horseplay turning awkward?

Attorney Chris Karpan, who represents one of the defendants, said the problem in Browerville is “systemic” and shouldn’t be handled by charging only a few kids, but should be addressed holistically.

The sheriff’s office began investigating in April, after a parent told a school official of an incident at a local lake, where members of the football team allegedly dunked, held and sexually assaulted a teammate under water.

Former seniors Seth Kellen and Connor Burns and a player charged as a juvenile all face criminal sexual conduct charges. Kellen, 19, is accused in five criminal complaints of numerous assaults on multiple victims, including some inside the central Minnesota high school. Burns, 18, is charged in assaults in a hotel room during the state basketball tournament.

Attorney Ryan Garry, who represents Burns, wrote in court papers that “the actions were like tradition or initiation.”

On My Bookshelf: Now reading and recommending Lazarus by Rashid Darden, a fast-paced story about a Beta Chi Phi legacy pledge facing his brutal potential brothers. www.oldgoldsoul.com

Heroine of my Broken Pledges book Eileen Stevens is 73. Today’s antihazing education and activism efforts go back to 1978 and her attempts to change the hazing culture nationally. One of the biggest triumphs has been the hazing research work done by Norm Pollard at Alfred University where her son died in ’78. Happy Birthday, dear amiga.

Here is the lead to Broken Pledges:

The call came in the middle of the night. Eileen Stevens’s son was dead. She was alert and numb at once, her flesh no longer part of her. She wanted to hang up. She wanted the caller to stay on the line forever. She wanted to know what had happened and how. But most of all she wanted the call to be a dream, a very bad dream.

The pain in the caller’s voice, the small break in his professional manner, revealed the truth, told her the worst had happened. She was ready to bargain with God. The devil. The caller himself: Take my life, my soul—take me. I’ve lived. But make it untrue. Take me, not Chuck.

But Chuck was dead.

She wondered through the house. A gong vibrated between her ears. She eyed the refrigerator. The freezer held the ingredients for chili. Chuck alone in her family loved it. Parents Weekend at Alfred University was approaching, and she had planned on taking him a special meal.

She went into his room. In the closet were the boots and skis she’d given him not two months earlier. He’d used them only once. She was glad she exceeded the budget to buy them. She could still hear his squeal of joy on Christmas morning. Twenty, he’d acted like a four-year-old. His joy was infectious, his hugs, genuine. If only she had kept hugging him forever, never let him go.