New York Post
November 16, 2004
Three fraternity brothers told their St. John's pledges to "assume the position" in a Queens park, then brutally beat one to the point of kidney failure as part of a violent hazing ritual, prosecutors said yesterday.
Matthew Fraser, 24, Anthony Dabreu, 25, and Phillippe Moreau, 32, stand accused of second-degree assault for allegedly paddling Brian Chambers last summer while he was pledging the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity.
"They have to bend forward at
the waist, stick their backsides out with their hands in front protecting their
genitals, while the defendants took the paddle and whacked them in the backside,
over and over," said
prosecutor Kimberley Nielsen in her opening statement in Queens Supreme Court.
According to Nielsen, Chambers, 21, spent two weeks at Beth Israel Medical Center in June and July of 2003 after being paddled in Kissena Park.
She said Moreau often drove the pledges to the park, where they were made to perform calisthenics, recite historical facts and, as the summer went on, endure beatings.
She said hospital records would show Chambers' buttocks were "a mass of bruises" and that his kidneys had given out as a result of blunt force trauma. Fraser's attorney, Frank Hancock, said Chambers' wounds could have been sustained from boxing.
