Hank Nuwer, Author; Hazing Deaths Database

Willard wrestlers plead guilty amid sex hazing charges

By DAN CLUTTER • News Journal • July 29, 2009

NORWALK — Three former Willard High School wrestlers pleaded guilty Monday to delinquent disorderly conduct amid charges stemming from hazing incidents.
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A complaint filed by Huron County Assistant Prosecutor Dina Shenker described two incidents in which three boys — ages 15, 16 and 17 — were accused of sexually abusing a freshman on the wrestling team.

The oldest boy was charged with assault and disorderly conduct. The other two were charged with complicity to assault and disorderly conduct.

All other charges were dropped when the teens agreed to plead guilty to disorderly conduct, a fourth-degree misdemeanor, in juvenile court.

The incidents occurred in December and February.

Shenker said the prosecutor’s office became involved when the victim’s parents went to Willard police.

Shenker said the victim’s family received abuse from former Willard High School wrestling coach Todd Fox and other parents and wrestlers, and said the family still receives threats.

“We needed to give the victim some finality,” Shenker said.

Fox resign- ed as wrestling coach Feb. 6 after receiving a letter of reprimand. He rescinded his resignation three days later, saying he let his emotions get the better of him.

The Willard school board, however, accepted the resignation and approved his removal March 3.

Fox said the incidents took place in the wrestling room before practice, and he was not present.

Shenker said assault and complicity to assault charges were dropped because there is little difference in disposition between first-degree and fourth-degree misdemeanors.

“The boys were more willing to admit they did these things under those circumstances,” she said. “Plus, we didn’t want to put the victim through three trials.”

The boys will learn their fates when they are sentenced. Shenker said rather than jail time, the three likely will see other sanctions.

“There are a lot of options ,” she said. “There is active probation, some kind of community service to pay back the victim for what they put him through. Plus, mental health assessments have to be made for each of the boys to determine a course of action.”

The plea agreement includes an order for each boy to stay away from the victim, and they must send him letters of apology. Shenker said the three will not be allowed on the wrestling team, and they will be closely monitored in other sports.

“The goal here is not to punish, but to rehabilitate,” Shenker said.

LEXINGTON, Ky.

Hazing Investigated at Dunbar High
Written by Carla Wade
Wednesday, 05 August 2009 19:42

Five Paul Laurence Dunbar High School (KY) football players are off the team, accused of hazing
their freshman teammates during football camp this week.
The principal of the high school says Monday, the members of the team gathered in the weight room and the boys were horsing around.
He says that’s when it escalated into some upperclassmen targeting the freshman players.
He says only one player was injured.
“Fortunately the one student that did have an injury is fine it could have been much more serious and that’s certainly part of our concern because that kind of behavior leading to any injury is just not going to be tolerated,” said Anthony Orr, the principal for Dunbar High School.
But a parent who contacted ABC 36 News by e-mail gives a different version of events.
Brian Jones says his 14-year-old son and two other freshman were lured into the weight room by the upperclassmen.
Jones says his son was beaten, punched and struck with a weighted medicine ball, resulting in him losing consciousness and suffering a concussion.
Jones says the boy also suffered memory loss.
Principal Orr says they are still looking into the incident and they met with parents Tuesday night to assure them they were taking the allegations seriously and dealing with the students involved.

Alleged Hazing At Basketball Camp

WHO Staff Writer

August 5, 2009
Nevada Hazing

Nevada High School basketball players accused of hazing (WHO)
At least three Nevada High School students are in trouble for allegedly hazing another student during a basketball camp at Simpson College last month.

Nevada High School’s basketball coach Joel Fey, reportedly called the parents of the children involved and told them to pick up their children. Fey did not notify Indianola Police or Simpson College.

Disciplinary action has been taken against the accused and the superintendent says additional sanctions will come when the investigation is complete. School board president Curt Hoff says the school board made it a priority last year to address bullying and hazing issues.

The basketball camp was held July 18th through the 21st. According to Simpson, about 500 students attended the camp, put on by Simpson coach Bruce Wilson. However, the high school coaches are in charge of supervising their players. The coaches and players must stay in Simpson’s residence halls.

Copyright © 2009, WHO-TV

Criminal case ends with dismissal of final hazing charges
USU » Prosecutor says he couldn’t prove hazing.

By Brian Maffly

The Salt Lake Tribune

Salt Lake Tribune
Updated:

With the blessing of prosecutors, hazing charges have been dismissed against four remaining defendants in the alcohol-poisoning death of a Utah State University fraternity pledge, putting to rest a criminal case that shook the Logan campus and brought attention to student alcohol abuse.

In the eight months since an overdose of vodka killed Michael Starks, five former Greek-society member have been sent to jail and a fraternity chapter and a sorority chapter shut down by their national offices. Prosecutors filed hazing charges against 12 Greek members and their chapters, but no one was convicted of hazing, disappointing some in the Starks’ tight-knit Salt Lake City family.

“It was hazing pure and simple,” said George Starks, Jr., the oldest of the six Starks children. “This was done as a pledge ritual. Michael died because they put a bottle in front of him and there was an expectation that he had to drink it if he wanted to get into that fraternity.”

On Monday, 1st District Judge Thomas Willmore dismissed the charge against the last defendant, Sigma Nu chapter president Cody Littlewood, who had moved to dismiss on grounds that his participation did not amount to hazing under Utah law.

Tony Baird, Cache County’s chief criminal prosecutor, had argued against the defense motion in oral and written presentations to the court, but withdrew his opposition last week.

“We conceded that we couldn’t meet our burden,” Baird said. The case was muddied by evidence that Starks had been smoking marijuana, using a fake ID to buy booze, and had been allowed to drink by his family, the prosecutor said.

The Starks family disputes that Michael was a substance abuser when he packed up for college three months before he died, calling such allegations “character assassination.” His siblings also say any such evidence is irrelevant to Utah’s hazing statute, which makes it a crime to induce someone to engage in reckless or humiliating behavior as a condition for membership in an organization.

Littlewood’s lawyer, Clayton Simms, said his client had been falsely accused, but tipped his hat to Baird for re-evaluating the case midstream.

“You have to admire the prosecutor’s courage to do the right thing,” Simms said. “At the end of the day this was still a tragedy, but through the process we discovered Cody Littlewood did not contribute to Michael Starks’ death. He looks forward to finishing his degree [in journalism] at Utah State and being a productive member of society.”

Starks was pledging at Littlewood’s fraternity last fall when the members selected him and another pledge for a mock kidnapping at the hands of Chi Omega sorority sisters. Littlewood presided over the meeting, but did not participate in the capture and later claimed he forbade the use of alcohol.

Eight Chi Omega women, all of them under 21, took the pledges to an off-campus house where they stripped and painted them, and some held a bottle of liquor to the pledges’ lips in a replay of past captures, charging documents say. Starks drank most of a fifth and was extremely drunk by the time fellow pledges returned him to the frat house. Littlewood was concerned enough about Starks’ condition to have a member call poison control.

The operator told the caller to make sure Starks could be roused. Littlewood had Starks lie down on a bedroom floor to sleep between two other pledges. Through the night, Littlewood checked on Starks, who was audibly snoring. At about 4 a.m., he discovered Starks wasn’t breathing. The frat members called 911 and initiated CPR.

Over the course of the prosecution, five students were convicted of purchasing and providing the liquor and hiding evidence, while the hazing charges evaporated. Judge Willmore ordered jail sentences ranging from eight to 30 days. As for probation, the students will perform a total of 1,000 hours of community service, much of it in the form of public presentations about alcohol abuse.

On July 20, Baird asked the court to dismiss hazing charges against three sorority sisters — Alexandra White, McKell Miner and Mallory Mitchell — still in the case.

“They showed up, but they didn’t have anything to do with the alcohol,” said Baird, who described the case as among the most difficult of his career. “Nothing rivaled it in terms of gut-wrenching emotion.”

“There was a huge split among the attorneys in the office, some of them saying no way on the hazing. I went for middle ground. I thought we should use the hazing statute as a vehicle to educate the public about the perils of binge drinking,” he continued. “In hindsight, the state should have focused on the main players, those that really contributed, not those that passively showed up. In the end, what was accomplished was the best we could expect. You’re never going to make all interested parties happy.”

bmaffly@sltrib.com

Parents of Lenoir-Rhyne student sue over “hazing”

06:50 PM EDT on Saturday, August 1, 2009

By BETH SHAYNE / NewsChannel 36
E-mail Beth: BShayne@WCNC.com

Video
August 1st, 2009
Parents of Lenoir-Rhyne student sue over “hazing”
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HICKORY, N.C.–The family of Harrison Kowiack filed suit Friday against Lenoir-Rhyne University, Theta Chi Fraternity, and the fraternity brothers they say contributed to the death of their son.

“They’ve decided…that no one should go to jail for what happened, but what we are raising here in the lawsuit is that there was negligence,” Harrison’s mother Lianne told Newschannel 36 by phone from her home in Tampa, Florida.

19-year-old Harrison Kowiak died November 18, 2008 after a game in a field not far from the small university’s campus. The lawsuit says that game, called bulldogging, is a long-standing traditional among Theta Chi’s. The suit says it involved requiring a pledge to fetch a rock in a pitch-dark field while active members in dark clothing repeatedly tackled the younger man.

Harrison Kowiak

Kowiack was a golfer at Lenoir-Rhyne and weighed about 160 pounds. Several of the older fraternity members were football players.

Kowiack, the lawsuit says, complained that he was injured, but he wasn’t taken seriously until he was wheezing and unresponsive on the ground. It alleges that fraternity members brought him to the hospital, but lied about what had happened. His autopsy concluded that Kowiak died of blunt trauma to his head.

The Catawba County Sheriff’s Office declined to press charges.

“This is every parent’s worst nightmare–to receive a call at midnight and hear that your son has been rushed to the ER,” Lianne Kowiack said. “I frankly think this was a hazing incident, and if we can raise some awareness out there then we know we’ve done something to educate some other college-bound students and families out there.”

The lawsuit filed Friday in Durham County seeks damages in excess of $10,000 from the parties named. It accuses that the following parties were negligent: the university, the university’s fraternity supervisor, the Theta Chi faculty advisor, Theta Chi and its’ Lenoir-Rhyne chapter. It says that all of those entities and individuals failed to enforce hazing policies already in place.

A spokeswoman for the university said, “Lenoir-Rhyne does not comment on pending litigation.”

A representative from Theta Chi did not return our phone call.

The lawsuit also names 21 young men who were allegedly a part of the “bulldogging.” We have not been able to make contact with any of them.

“It may sound corny, but Harrison was just a wonderful son,” Kowiack said. “It just incomprehensible that something like this could have happened.”

Newschannel 36 exposed another “hazing” incident at Lenoir-Rhyne in 2006.

Our I-Team confronted the school’s women’s soccer team over a video on YouTube that showed older players encouraging other girls to drink cups full of vodka.

Several young women were punished for abuse of the university’s alcohol policy, but the university never officially called it hazing.