Miami Secret Service agent case shows depth of ‘underground’ hazing, experts say

When a Miami Secret Service agent and two of his fellow alums of the nation’s second-oldest historically Black fraternity were arrested and accused of beating two men so badly they required emergency hospital care in the near-fatal cases, the reaction among many was disbelief.

How could the alums cane and paddle the two men secretly over four nights in the agent’s Sweetwater apartment and in a house in Miami-Dade, as described in their arrest affidavit? These were men in their mid- to late 20s, beyond university age when fraternity and sorority hazing normally occurs.

The fraternity’s national headquarters — Kappa Alpha Psi, the 115-year-old historically Black fraternity that is part of the Divine Nine — quickly distanced itself, saying the three men arrested weren’t “financial” or “active” members.

But that’s part of the playbook to get out of any liability, says a lawyer who has filed suits in dozens of hazing cases, including one that resulted in the death of a pledge.

The level of hazing, and having alumni involved, is not atypical and happens in other Greek-letter organizations as well, according to hazing experts who spoke to the Herald. “Rogue” members, who believe new members should go through the same fraternity initiation rites as they did, often are the perpetrators.

But it’s considered “underground” and rarely talked about, say alums and hazing experts. The Herald contacted several prominent local alums of Kappa Alpha Psi — but they wouldn’t comment.

Longtime Kappa Alpha Psi member and former Florida state senator Dwight Bullard previously told the Herald that once someone becomes a member, they are a “member for life.” He said alumni are useful for job connections and often invite undergraduates out to eat or to attend sporting events. But, sometimes, he added, alumni are used to haze pledges.

“Someone might get called back to talk about the history of the organization,” he told the Herald before the three men were arrested.

“It should not turn into a physical altercation or any form of hazing, but sometimes it does. And I’m just saying that because there are stories out there that exist. So I’m not going to act like, you know, it doesn’t happen. But it shouldn’t.”

While the Divine Nine, the nickname for the group representing historically Black Greek-letter organizations, banned the pledging process in 1990 to eliminate hazing, it still exists.

“Many of the individuals who were then members of their nationals had only gained entrance by virtue of going through very, very difficult pledge processes, and they objected to this idea that more people would become members without having endured the hardships that they had,” said Douglas Fierberg, an attorney who has represented hazing victims in dozens of cases.

The three men — Marquez Christopher Pinder, 29, the Secret Service agent, Jared Lamar James, 26, and Elijah Delano Dyous, 29 — have each been charged with two counts of attempted manslaughter with a deadly weapon, two counts of aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and one count of hazing with a deadly weapon — all felonies. All three pleaded not guilty and are on house arrest. The Secret Service placed Pinder on administrative leave.

One of the victims is a first-year law student at the University of Miami and the other is a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue employee. The victims’ names have been redacted from the arrest affidavits.

Clash between old and new

Historically Black Greek-letter organizations started forming in the early 1900s as Black college students faced widespread racial discrimination and exclusion from the social and extracurricular life of predominantly white universities. At Indiana University in 1911, Black students were excluded from campus social events and many university facilities. Ten Black men then formed Kappa Alpha Nu, which became Kappa Alpha Psi a few years later.

As more Black fraternities and sororities formed, they created the National Pan-Hellenic Council, known as the Divine Nine, to act collectively.

It is not rare for Black men to join alumni or graduate chapters of historically Black fraternities after university-age. But sometimes the hazing rituals can go too far.

In 2015, a 45-year-old Washington D.C. man sued Kappa Alpha Psi for $2 million after he was beaten and smacked with a cane by an off-duty police officer, a member of the fraternity’s alumni chapter, while trying to join the alumni chapter. The outcome of the case is not publicly available, but it was possibly settled out of court.

“It’s not uncommon for someone who is in their 30s, 40s, 50s, some maybe even their 60s, who become members of a graduate chapter,” Byron Hurt, a documentarian, lecturer and a member of one of the Divine Nine fraternities.

Hurt, like Fierberg, said there is a clash between old members and new members that can often result in these severe hazing incidents, often conducted off campus, sometimes by fraternity alumni.

Members who joined in the past, he said, had to prove that they were “worthy” of being a member. “That could include physical violence. It could involve emotional abuse. It could involve sleep deprivation,” he said.

Last year, Miami University in Ohio suspended its Kappa Alpha Psi chapter through 2040 — a 15-year suspension — after an investigation found that chapter leaders and alumni subjected prospective pledges to paddling, caning and keeping them awake for weeks. Pledges were brought to a house off-campus, similar to what happened in Miami.

“The psychological manipulation, the beatings, the sleep deprivation, this kid was a shell of himself, ‘‘ Tom Merrman, a lawyer for one of the pledges, a junior at the university, told WLWT5, the NBC station in Cincinnati. “He was practically catatonic.”

The new pledging process, Hurt said, is more supervised and shorter.

Pinder, James and Dyous are accused of striking the two men with paddles and canes on their buttocks over four nights for wrong responses to questions about the fraternity — a pledge process that is still common in Greek-letter organizations, according to Elizabeth Allan, the principal at Stop Hazing and lead researcher at the Hazing Prevention Research lab at the University of Maine.

“I’ve seen people with kidney damage and other injuries from paddling across a range of fraternity types,” Allan said.

Liability issues

Fraternities and sororities often try to remove themselves quickly from major incidents due to liability issues.

“In virtually all of the circumstances where there’s significant injury or death, the nationals work hard to distance themselves from those events, anticipating that they’re going to have to raise off defenses, both morally and in the context of civil litigation that’s likely to follow,” Fierberg said.

Victim 1, however, told a Sweetwater Police detective that Pinder was the dean of pledges, James was the vice dean of pledges, and Dyous was the one who assigned Pinder and James, according to the arrest warrant affidavits.

The alleged hazing incidents happened over four nights, starting at Pinder’s Sweetwater apartment and later in a house in unincorporated Miami-Dade, northwest of Cutler Bay. They were paddled or caned for wrong answers to questions about the fraternity’s history.

One of Pinder’s attorneys, Justin Beckham, previously told the Miami Herald that his client was “grossly overcharged,” but did not say anything further.

Victim 1, the University of Miami law student, had to undergo emergency surgery to remove the skin from his buttocks and replace it with skin grafts because it was so damaged. His other injuries were so bad that if he’d not received the “necessary emergency care,” they would have resulted in “renal failure leading to death,” according to the affidavits.

Fierberg said historically Black fraternities often will have members sign a release when they join that releases the fraternity from any liability, not a common practice among white fraternities. The fraternities also will have members sign an arbitration agreement, which would compel them to proceed with any claims in arbitration, he added.

Kappa Alpha Psi did not respond to questions about whether their members signed these forms.

The law student had already paid membership dues and passed a test in February, he told police. He has retained an attorney at Morgan & Morgan.

Fierberg said he’d expect civil attorneys to be able to circumvent those issues.

“There’s varying duties of care that a national fraternity would owe pledges, particularly because underground hazing is so prevalent, and there are claims that the national fraternity has engaged in negligence in its failure to commit the resources and oversight necessary to stamp it out,” Fierberg said.

Denied being paddled

Victim 2, the Miami-Dade Fire Rescue employee, admitted to investigators that he was present on the four nights of the hazing, but denied being paddled or any form of hazing, contradicting victim 1, who said victim 2 had been paddled to the point of bleeding through his clothes on the fourth night.

However, victim 2 did admit to detectives he received critical emergency care and said he was still receiving care for his wounds. Police obtained his medical records, which revealed that he had received “extensive medical treatment” from April 6-April 24, including intubation.

Sweetwater police did not learn about the hazing incident until they were called to Jackson South Medical Center on April 22 and spoke to victim 1, who was there being treated for his injuries.

Victims of hazing often deny they were abused because of fear of retribution from other fraternity members or “social death,” experts told the Herald.

“It is very common for people who have been hazed to protect the chapter or the members of that chapter, so that they are not getting that chapter in trouble, so that that chapter won’t get suspended or lose its charter. Or they defend it because they still want to be members of that organization,” said Hurt, the documentarian. “They also don’t want the penalty that comes with essentially snitching on a chapter.”

Victims of hazing might not recognize they’re being hazed or might minimize the hazing, according to Allan, the principal of Stop Hazing.

“Supposedly, these people are welcoming you to, you know, a club, team, or organization,” she said. “It’s confusing for people because it’s like, well, wait a minute, these people are supposed to be my friends or my teammates or whatever, and so they wouldn’t do anything that would harm me.

“And so I think there’s this cognitive dissonance and there’s, you know, this confusion and people start to think like, you know, am I going crazy here?”

Once they recognize that they have been hazed and it is dangerous, they then have to face the dilemma of what happens if they tell on them, she said.

“I mean, anytime you’re joining a group, you think this is something you’ve thought about, you want to be a part of it and be included. And so reporting it or confronting it may mean that you are compromising your membership in that group or team,” said Allan, who compared victims of hazing to victims of domestic violence.

Prevention

For Allan, the principal of Stop Hazing, hazing prevention starts with data and awareness. She pointed to new efforts such as the Hazing Info database and the forthcoming relaunch of the National Study of Student Hazing as attempts to capture the scope of the problem.

“I can say that there has been an increase in awareness about the harms related to hazing and the need for its prevention, so there’s definitely been more engagement in hazing prevention in recent years, and I think there’s been more public awareness because of education and because incidents are making the headlines now,” she said.

National fraternities and sororities often point to their anti-hazing policies and training as proof they are tackling the problem. Kappa Alpha Psi’s national governing documents explicitly prohibit hazing. The fraternity’s Constitution and Statutes state: “All hazing as prescribed in the pronouncement on hazing is prohibited.”

But Allan questioned how deep those efforts really go across Greek-letter organizations.

“There are a lot of well-intended folks in national fraternities and sororities who do not want any harm to happen and want students to have a good experience and an experience that’s healthy and supports well-being, and so yeah, there are a lot of prevention efforts in many of these organizations, but the degree to which they are well resourced, you know, it’s hard to say.”

“…and then at the same time, if there is a hazing incident and no one’s held accountable, what message is that sending?”

Hurt, who is also a university professor in New York, conducts training for boys and men about the culture of masculinity and the way they can help eradicate gender-based violence or violence against women. He told the Herald that hazing occurs in part because of the culture in the U.S.

“When it comes to fraternities, we are more violent in nature than our sororities, and I believe that the culture of masculinity in America primes boys and men to participate in, engage in violent activities or violent practices as a rite of passage, or as a way to prove your manhood to other men and to women in some cases, and because there is an association between like a man’s worthiness and his ability to both endure physical violence and also to enact physical violence,” he said.

In order to change it, he said we need to “address the culture of masculinity at its core” and begin to understand why.

“Why men are socialized and conditioned to participate in violence? Why we normalize violence? Why we don’t challenge other men’s violence toward each other?”

“There has to be massive education and training, and an interrogation of the culture of masculinity, and really sort of asking men to stand up and to speak out against all forms of violence, including male violence toward other men.”

Miami Herald staff writers Veronica Egui Brito and Raisa Habersham contributed to this report.