Defendants Claim Alibi During St. John’s PBS Hazing Incident

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Defendants Claim Alibi During St. John’s Hazing Incident

by Neille Ilel, Chronicle Reporter December 09, 2004

___The defendants in the St. John’s University hazing trial took the stand last week and testified that they were all at the same Phi Beta Sigma meeting in Manhattan during the night Brian Chambers was allegedly beaten so badly in Kissena Park that he suffered kidney failure.
___Anthony D’Abreu, 24, was pleasant and collected as he answered attorneys’ questions on Friday, December 3rd. He said that he was at Hunter College, at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue, until the late evening on July 10, 2003. Members of Sigma chapters throughout New York City met to discuss the results of a fraternity picnic they held earlier in the summer.
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___D’Abreu testified that he drove to Brooklyn at 1 a.m., got some Popeye’s Chicken on Fulton Street and dropped off a friend before going home to Canarsie. He said he was not in Kissena Park that evening and that he never paddled fellow Sigma member Chambers during any unofficial pledge processes.
___“I never paddled Brian Chambers,” D’Abreu said. “I never saw either of the co-defendants paddle Brian Chambers.”
___D’Abreu, along with Phillipe Moreau, 32, of Jamaica and Matthew Fraser, 24, of Elmont, Long Island are charged with second-degree assault and face up to seven years in prison for hitting Chambers with a wooden paddle hard enough and often enough to send him to the hospital.
___Chambers testified earlier that the three encouraged him to take part in an unofficial pledge process that included reciting history, performing calisthenics and being hit on the backside with a wooden paddle when mistakes were made. He said that he and fellow pledge Ryan Jackson endured several sessions from June 15th to July 10th last year.
___D’Abreu, who, in 2002, underwent an unofficial pledge process himself, described it as a way for the fellow pledges, or line brothers, to bond and trust one another. He said all the activities were voluntary and that it was understood that a pledge could stop participating at any time. “No one can force you to do anything,” he said.
___D’Abreu said he was paddled less than 10 times and only during the last week of the process. “It was part of the ritual,” he said. Pledges would be hit once for each of the three founding brothers. He kept the paddle, which he bought, as a memento, but said he didn’t know where it was now.
___Chambers told a starkly different story of his pledge experience. He said he was beaten as many as a hundred times on one occasion. Sometimes he had to hold up Jackson, his line brother, so he wouldn’t fall down from the force.
___On July 12th, Chambers went to Victory Memorial Hospital in Brooklyn and later to Beth Israel Hospital in Manhattan, where he was on dialysis after suffering problems with his kidneys. His physician, Dr. Steven Gruber, testified a week prior that Chambers suffered from injuries consistent with his story of being hit hard repeatedly on the backside.
___The three defendants are not charged with hazing, which is a misdemeanor and carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail. The word, “hazing,” has been barred from the court proceedings. Instead they are facing assault charges, which carry stiffer penalties. A decision in the case is expected next week.
___The Phi Beta Sigma charter with St. John’s University was suspended for four years after this incident came to light, according to Jody Fisher, spokesman for the university.
___He emphasized that the three defendants in the case were not St. John’s students at the time of the alleged beatings. Two had graduated and the other was not registered, he said. The defense attorneys mentioned that St. John’s likely feared being sued.
___Other instances of severe hazing have been attached to the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity in the past few years. All six members of the Phi Beta Sigma chapter at Southern Illinois University were implicated in an initiation ritual in which a pledge was paddled so badly his kidney was ruptured, an injury very similar to that of Chambers. In October 2003, the University of Texas at Arlington’s chapter of Phi Beta Sigma was suspended over allegations of hazing.
___Regional officers of Phi Beta Sigma could not be reached for comment.