← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · hqz
Thread ID: 13957 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-05-29
2004-05-29 21:18 | User Profile
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Star, July 27, 1999 Special Star Investigation
George W. Bush in Torture Scandal by Richard Gooding
Presidential candidate George W. Bush once led a Yale fraternity that barbarically branded its new members on their backsides with a red-hot metal rod as part of a sadistic hazing practice.
"I got branded and I didn't like it one bit," Professor Bradford Lee of the elite Naval War College in Newport, R.I.-an ex-football player and onetime member of Bush's Delta Epsilon Kappa fraternity-told STAR in an exclusive interview.
"It did burn," he says, recalling the terrifying experience. "I think I still have the mark on me."
Bush, the oldest son of former President George Bush, is now the runaway front-runner for the Republican nomination for president. His campaign stresses responsible individual behavior, family values and compassion for one's fellow citizens.
But a STAR investigation has revealed that he was president of Delta Epsilon Kappa when the hazing scandal broke in the campus newspaper in the late '60s-leading to the fraternity being fined and the branding practice halted.
Amazingly, Bush, now the governor of Texas, defended the illegal torture of the young fraternity pledges at the time as a harmless prank-insisting that it was comparable to "only a cigarette burn" which left "no scarring mark physically or mentally."
But others said the branding resulted in a second-degree burn that left a half-inch scab in the shape of the Greek letter Delta.
Lee-who still bears the mark 32 years later-is not sure who actually wielded the brand because the pledges were not allowed to look at their tormentors. "But I do know that George Bush was very active in all the fraternity activities then."
Lee, who was a guard on the Yale football team, recalled that the branding came after "a long initiation that went on into the early morning hours."
He says the idea was to wear you out so much that you allowed your bare flesh to be singed. "I was already tired from football practice earlier that day. I was so groggy I wasn't exactly sensitive to what they were up to. I wasn't very happy about it."
The branding was a key reason why Lee quit the fraternity after just one year. "It got things off on a sour note, you might say," he notes.
Bill Katz, now a community college teacher in northern New Jersey, told STAR that the branding was done with "a wire coat hanger twisted into a triangle and heated up" in the fireplace.
"They touched you just above the buttocks, in the small of the back," he says.
And Boston lawyer Franklin Levy said that to increase the fear of the moment, the older fraternity men first brandished an actual glowing hot branding iron-to make them think that was what awaited them.
"When they burned me," Levy remembers, "I jumped a mile."
Before the brandings, pledges had to endure hours of being kicked and a vicious round of tannings with wooden paddles-another practice that Yale has ruled taboo.
"On that night," according to an account in the Yale Daily News in 1967, 'each pledge was forced to sit with his head between his legs, motionless, for two to five hours.
"If he coughed, raised his hand or talked, he was kicked by an older brother." After all the beatings, recalled one fraternity member, the branding was almost a relief.
In the wake of the Yale Daily News' expose of the fraternity's hazing, Bush, whose father was also a DKE at Yale, admitted the branding to the New York Times in November 1967.
But Bush-whose college nickname was "Lip" for his Texas wisecracks-also ripped into Yale for being too "Haughty" to "allow this type of pledging to go on."
Bush's days and nights at Yale were mostly remembered as non-stop party and prank time by his former fraternity brothers. During his junior year, he was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge in the theft of a Christmas wreath from a storefront to decorate the DKE house. At a football game against Princeton, he helped tear down a goal post and ended up being hauled to the campus police station.
"We drank heavily at DKE," says Gregory Gallico, now a Boston plastic surgeon, as he recalled Bush and his other fraternity brothers. "It was absolutely off the wall-appalling.
"I cannot for the life of me figure out how we all made it through."
Author Gooding's scoops have included Dick Morris's toe-sucking and the most recent Newt Gingrich sex scandal.[/FONT]
2004-05-30 03:01 | User Profile
Was she preparing her son for affirmative action admission to Yale or the US Army?
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Child burned; mom charged By WILL DAVID THE JOURNAL NEWS (Original publication: May 29, 2004)
YONKERS ââ¬â A city woman is facing a serious assault charge after she was arrested for disciplining her 12-year-old son by heating a large kitchen spoon on the stove and burning him on the nose, mouth, right wrist, left hand and stomach, police said yesterday.
Maria Williams-Melendez of 324 Palisade Ave., was charged with second-degree assault, a felony, and acting in a manner injurious to a child under 17, a misdemeanor.
She was arraigned yesterday before Judge Arthur Doran III and released without bail pending a hearing June 11 in Yonkers City Court. She was also ordered to undergo drug testing.
Williams-Melendez was arrested Thursday afternoon at her home.
Police said that at 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, Williams-Melendez' son arrived home from school late. To discipline him, his mother took a 12-inch metal spoon and heated it on the stove. She then called him into the kitchen and yelled at him about being late, then burned him with the hot spoon, police said.
He suffered first- and second-degree burns, according to police reports.
Yonkers Police Capt. Patrick McMahon said the boy did not tell school officials at Yonkers Middle High School, but a teacher saw the wounds and notified school authorities. School officials called the police. The police interviewed the child and then his mother before she was arrested.
The boy was turned over to Child Protective Services after he was treated at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Yonkers.