Edited script
Robert Riggs
For generations, fraternities have lured young men with the promise of brotherhood, belonging, and lifelong bonds.
But too often, the rites of initiation into this brotherhood have turned into something sinister.
Brutal acts of torture and coerced drug use.
Across the United States, hazing has left a trail of dead students, shattered families, and institutions that too often seemed better at protecting their reputations than protecting young people.
This story begins in Texas with an 18-year-old freshman named Sawyer Updike.
His mother says Sawyer joined a college fraternity seeking friendship, belonging, and a future.
Instead, according to a wrongful death lawsuit filed by his parents, Sawyer Updike entered a world of violent hazing, forced drug intoxication, threats, and psychological domination inside the Sigma Chi fraternity chapter at the University of Texas at Austin.
The lawsuit alleges that what was done to Sawyer over the months helped drive him into a psychological crisis that ended in death by suicide in January of 2024.
That is the allegation.
But the larger question is not confined to a single lawsuit or a single campus.
Why do these deadly hazing incidents keep happening?
And how bad is the problem, really?
Hello, this is Robert Riggs. During the years of my investigative reporting on television, hazing death caused by the coerced consumption of deadly amounts of alcohol became all too common.
In this episode, you will hear about a hazing case that describes a major fraternity and its members as a cult of brutal sadists.
You will hear from Sawyer Updikeâs mother, Sheri Roberts, who says she only learned the extent of the alleged hazing after her son died and she began searching through his phone and social media.
You will also hear from attorney Ted Lyon, who represents Sawyerâs parents in the civil case and argues that weak laws and institutional tolerance help keep this cycle alive.
And we will widen the lens.
Because this is not simply a story about one familyâs grief.
It is a story about how organized coercion can hide behind Greek letters, alumni money, campus culture, and a language of belonging.
Sheri Roberts
So Sawyer was born in Africa and in a small country called Mauritius. It was absolutely beautiful.
Robert Riggs
Sheri Roberts begins where many mothers do. Before the lawsuit. Before the headlines. Before the word hazing entered her life in its ugliest form.
She starts with her son.
Sheri Roberts
We moved back to the United States when he was almost two, and he was a very, very quiet kid, always very quiet. You can tell by his facial expressions what he was feeling so you know, if he was happy and or he thought something was funny, he would turn his face and smile, but you could see his cheeks rise from the side. So really, just not a whole lot of words from it. But he got very interested. He wouldn't even step on a field to play any sports when he was young, but he eventually got interested in baseball and football, and he took that all the way through high school. He played the tuba in school through his sophomore year in high school. He was a Boy Scout. He loved to hunt and fish.
Robert Riggs
She describes Sawyer as an outdoorsman. A football player. A fisherman. A smart kid who had athletic scholarship options, but chose academics.
He wanted to study petroleum engineering. Following his motherâs career as an executive in energy companies.
And when he got into the University of Texas at Austin, he was thrilled.
Sheri Roberts
So he was really happy to go to the University of Texas. And he could have walked on to play football, but I had suggested that he concentrate on his studies, because petroleum engineering was going to be difficult.
Robert Riggs
There was one more thing Sawyer wanted.
If he was not going to play football, he wanted fraternity life.
To his mother, that sounded like a normal college decision.
A way to make friends.
A way to belong.
Sheri Roberts
So fraternity. They actually started pledging in July, starting with the orientation, when he went to University of Texas, the Austin orientation, and he met a really good friend there, and the two of them decided they were going to pledge Sigma Chi, even before he went to school the first day.
Robert Riggs
What Sheri Roberts says she did not know then is the central heartbreak of this story.
She thought the worst stories about hazing belonged to another era.
She says she was wrong.
Sheri Roberts
I knew fraternities would, you know, have a, probably some kind of Hell Week, and there'd be some shenanigans. But I didn't know what I expected, but I didn't expect what I found. That's what I certainly didn't expect. I didn't expect my son to be tortured.
Robert Riggs
In November of 2025, Sawyerâs parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Travis County, Texas.
It alleges that months of brutal hazing by members of the Alpha Nu chapter of Sigma Chi, and the forced introduction of illegal drugs, drove Sawyer into a psychological crisis that ended in death by suicide on January 16, 2024.
The lawsuit names Sigma Chi International, the Alpha Nu chapter, the house corporation, and five fraternity members.
It alleges that the photographed and videotaped acts shared by fraternity members include burning Sawyer with cigarettes, driving a fishhook through his leg and making him remove it, forcing and coercing cocaine use and psychedelic mushrooms, depriving him of sleep, beating him, and stapling his hip.
It also alleges fraternity members threatened to rape his girlfriend to force his compliance.
I have included a link to a news release from the Ted Lyon and Associates Law Firm about the lawsuit. And caution that the photographs of the abuse are emotionally disturbing.
Months after her sonâs funeral, Sheri Roberts discovered digital evidence of the abusive hazing.
Sheri Roberts
I got his phone back, I got his laptop back, I got his iPad back, and I started looking.
Robert Riggs
What she says she found was not one ugly night.
It was a pattern.
And that matters.
Because hazing is often misunderstood as a single initiation stunt. A drunken mess. A bad decision.
But the lawsuit, and Sheriâs account, describe something more systematic. More organized. More controlling.
Sheri Roberts
The one I did not find in the beginning was the threats that they made to him to sexually assault his girlfriend if he didn't do what they wanted. The alcohol abuse I expected. I expected drinking in a fraternity that I expected, but I didn't expect that they would have to do a six pack at 11 in the morning as fast as they could. And then review it and do that every day for five days, plus other things that was on video. Also all of the beer reviews were they had to make a whole video of their beer reviews, the burning of the flesh was also hard to watch.
Robert Riggs
She says one image especially stayed with her.
Sheri Roberts
Yeah? Yes, yes. So he had a fish hook driven through his leg, and then when he was inside the fraternity house, he had to remove it.
Robert Riggs
And she says this did not happen in some isolated rush event.
It kept going.
Sheri Roberts
Yeah, more. So it started from orientation in July.
Robert Riggs
That timeline is critical.
The complaint says Alpha Nu was already on probation by the university for hazing pledges the previous year when Sawyer was allegedly being hazed.
And then came the final days.
Sheri Roberts
So I knew he had just left Florida. He went back to our house in Texas, and he, you know, traded out his clothes and such, and he told me he had to go to the fraternity for a dinner, so he needed to get back. And I think he went back. It was a Sunday, and I don't know what happened on the Sunday exactly, but on the Monday was the night he died. It was actually Tuesday morning, but Monday night they had a rush event for the next pledge class, and so he had to be there for that. And that's all. I know that he was there.
Robert Riggs
Photographs of the hazing showed Sawyer lying flat on the floor while fraternity members poured spoonfuls of cocaine into his nose.
The lawsuit alleges that on January 16, 2024, the first day of Sawyerâs second semester, he went to the fraternity house and was given cocaine and mind-altering mushrooms.
It further alleges that a short time later, while suffering the effects of those substances and in a worsening psychological crisis, he drove to a nearby convenience store parking lot, where he shot himself to death.
Sheri Roberts believes the drug hazing was central to what happened that night. She says there was no sign that her son was suffering from depression.
Sheri Roberts
It was quite the opposite. It was very much the opposite. He had just finished the first semester. He's going into his second semester, right? So he had good grades, his grades were fine, he's going into his second semester. We had plans with the trapping ski team, very excited about that. I really think it was you. It's the combination of the alcohol and the mushrooms and the cocaine. You know, anybody wouldn't behave rationally. I don't think that was him.
Robert Riggs
In other words, this was not, in her view, the act of a young man with no future to lose.
He had plans. He had good grades. He had competitions coming up. He had people expecting to see him.
That does not answer every question.
But it does sharpen one of them.
How does a young person stay inside a system like this?
Why not just walk away?
Ted Lyon, the familyâs attorney, says that question underscores the power of the group.
Ted Lyon
Well, first of all, you get somebody like Sawyer. He scored 1485 or something, 1450 on SAT. He never used any kind of drug in high school. He was an outstanding athlete. He played baseball, football and other sports, and he was really, really an outdoorsman. He goes down there and he's very vulnerable. He wants to be part of this group, and then what happens is they begin to put him into this cult-like atmosphere. So they're very vulnerable.
Robert Riggs
Cult-like is Ted Lyonâs word.
Sheri Roberts reached for similar language herself.
Sheri Roberts
Yeah, I said similar cults, probably better. I said gang or cartel, very similar. There's money involved. You've got the alumni involved, and then the weak laws, I call it the three-legged stool, so the combination of all of those allows this to continue.
Robert Riggs
There is strong research behind the emotional truth they are trying to describe.
National hazing research says the pattern is built on secrecy, conformity, escalating commitment, fear of exclusion, and group pressure. It is designed to make leaving feel costly.
This is why outsiders so often get the wrong idea.
They assume consent.
The research suggests something closer to coercion wrapped in belonging.
And the scale of the problem is far larger than most people realize.
Hazing research indicates 123 hazing deaths in the United States since 2000, or roughly five a year in the modern era.
The National Study of Student Hazing found that 55 percent of students involved in clubs, teams, and organizations experienced hazing, about 73 percent of fraternity and sorority members did, and 95 percent of students who experienced hazing did not report it.
That silence is not incidental.
It is part of the machinery.
Ted Lyon
I really don't, but there are plenty of psychiatrists and psychologists out there that do these victims. First of all, you start inculcating, I think would be the word, them, into this group. And then they start using the drugs. Then they're part of a group, and they want to be part of the group that's above them, and they're part of another group of all these other young men that are doing the same thing.
Robert Riggs
The old euphemisms matter here.
Brotherhood.
Tradition.
Bonding.
Those words shrink with what the evidence often shows.
Because when drugs, dangerous levels of alcohol consumption, and physical abuse are coerced, it is not partying.
When pain is required to earn acceptance, it is not team building.
It is organized coercion disguised as belonging.
And that brings us to the law.
Ted Lyon says Texas law lets fraternities get away with hazing.
Ted Lyon
Misdemeanors, slap on the wrist. And, you know, everybody wants to give kids a chance. But this is not, this isn't just normal. I mean, I personally was in a fraternity when I was in college years ago, and they made us do some things, but, like, who could out chug somebody with a beer, which was stupid, but we did it and, but we never, ever, ever did anything like even harm anybody. And this was a fraternity that was at North Texas State University at the time that was composed of athletes, and, I mean, some of the toughest people on campus were in that fraternity. So it wasn't this. This kind of stuff is crazy. You know, it's just absolutely criminal. It should be criminal.
Robert Riggs
Texas is not among the very weakest anti-hazing states. But it is not among the strongest either.
States including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Florida, and Kentucky have more muscular felony frameworks for cases involving serious bodily injury or death.
Forty-four states and the District of Columbia have anti-hazing laws, but the strength of those laws varies sharply.
There has been one major national shift.
The federal Stop Campus Hazing Act, which became law in late 2024, requires colleges and universities to include hazing incidents in annual security reports and to publish transparency information about organizations found responsible for hazing.
But that is a transparency law, not a national criminal code.
Sunlight matters.
But sunlight alone does not create deterrence.
Ted Lyon
Well, first of all, I want to send a message, and the only way to send a message is to get a huge verdict in this case, not that we'll ever collect it, but we want to try this case to a verdict and get a huge verdict, like over $100 million that will be headlined across the United States. Now, when we filed this lawsuit and we held a press conference, it was so shocking what had happened to Sawyer that I got calls from people in England and Europe. It went worldwide, and so the only way they're going to change behavior is to send such a message to insurance companies who insure the liability of these fraternities that they really come down hard or just deny liability insurance altogether. Number two, I want the legislature to change the law so that it makes it a felony to have hazing that creates serious bodily harm to vulnerable individuals like these young 18 year old boys or young 18 year old girls
Robert Riggs
Sheri Roberts says her goal is similar, though she speaks as a mother, not a lawyer.
Sheri Roberts
The biggest thing I want to accomplish with the lawsuit is to, one, highlight this hazing, how horrible this is. In most of the other cases, it happens to be all boys that have died from fraternity hazing. But to highlight the extent to which hazing occurred, most of what people have seen is the alcohol aspect and people dying, boys dying from alcohol, or incidents from after the alcohol.
Robert Riggs
So what do you say to a parent that is about to send their son or daughter off to a university and they're going to go into a fraternity or a sorority? What should they know?
Sheri Roberts
Great question. What should I have known? Do your research. There is a lot more information now about hazing in universities, particularly coming out this year, 2026 so in 2025 Biden signed into law the stop hazing act. I think that's right, stop hazing act, and it requires universities to report they have to report murders and, you know other just call it bad things that happen at universities. They already have to report that. They did not have to report hazing. So now they also have to include hazing in their security reports, and that is all going to be published through the act and at the end of this year will be the first time all the universities have to comply with the national law. In addition, there's been it's hazing info.com they are really good at giving all the statistics for hazing. And you can look up any university, any fraternity or sorority, and look up the incidents, the deaths, in particular, University of Texas at Austin is the deadliest university in the United States for hazing. They've had nine deaths since they've been recording hazing incidents, which I think was 1928, when they started collecting data. So there's a lot of data out there. Another thing to look for is when you go visit a university before you decide in what school, try and go to a football game and look for all the people who are dressed alike, because that's kind of one of the first stages of hazing in Sawyer's case, it was 104 degrees during the football season, and they were wearing long pants and long shirts on purpose. So they all had to wear University of Texas Austin burnt orange long shirts and long khaki pants. So, you know, look for that. Look for any signs of things that might showcase the start of hazing.
Robert Riggs
The Alpha Nu chapter of Sigma Chi brought a busload of its fraternity members to Sawyerâs funeral.
Sheri Roberts gave out distinctive funeral bracelets in the burnt orange color of the University of Texas in remembrance of her son.
Months later, Roberts says she saw her late sonâs bracelets in a hazing video captured in his still-active social media account.
Sheri Roberts
I happened to be looking at his Snapchat when spring break occurred, and what I saw is the same exact torture. So there was a pledge that was being burned on his hand, and one guy was burning his right hand, and you can see the scars of the first two burns, and he's burning another, you know, another spot in his hand, and then on the left hand side is another guy who's burning the left hand. So he's being held down, and he's, you know, almost screaming as they're burning his hands. But the most disturbing part to me was that both of them who were burning him had Sawyer's funeral bracelets on.
Robert Riggs
So what does it say about the moral culture of a fraternity when young men can take part in, tolerate, or ignore abuse, then show up in mourning after the victim is dead?
And then inflict the same brutal physical abuse on another fraternity pledge.
Think about that.
How many more funerals will it take before hazing is treated not as a frat boy's bonding tradition, but as serious violence by a brotherhood of brutality?
I have placed links to information sources about hazing in the show notes.
Until next time, this is Robert Riggs reporting.
