Police are investigating reports of hazing involving the Norwich University women’s rugby team, including allegations of branding and waterboarding.
While the military academy says it is “fully cooperating” with the probe, Washington County State’s Attorney Rory Thibault said there’s “a difference … between being cooperative and being helpful.”
“I don’t think they have been particularly helpful to the law enforcement investigation,” Thibault said, “but to say that they’re not cooperative, I think, would carry the wrong connotation because they’re electing to be more guarded or restrictive in terms of information they are willing to share.”
The investigation began after Northfield police received a report around 3:20 a.m. on March 20 that a person was being held at knifepoint, according to a police affidavit first reported by The Times Argus on Friday.
Northfield Police Officer Karie Tucker responded to the scene and found an intoxicated student, identified as a 22-year-old member of the rugby team, on the school’s campus.
The woman told Tucker a man had “possibly taken a knife” and “held it to her,” according to the affidavit.
A nursing student who lived in the same building as the rugby player later told Tucker she had received multiple text messages from the rugby player throughout the early-morning hours. When the nursing student went to check on the rugby player at one point, she found her by a window covered in urine and called authorities, according to the affidavit.
In an interview two days later, the rugby player told police she thought someone had come into the room that night, taken her knife and threatened her — though she was not clear of the details because she was intoxicated.
She also told police that she believed she was “branded” that night by other members of the rugby team. She thought they used a pair of pliers and a lighter.
“She advised she was too intoxicated to say no and would not have said yes had she been sober,” Tucker wrote in the affidavit. “I have heard of similar things within the Norwich community involving hazing of students.”
Police reviewed the rugby player’s cellphone, finding the text messages she had sent to the nursing student, Tucker wrote.
“I also observed a video on Snapchat of (the rugby player), holding a chair down, while another girl sits in the chair with a washcloth (or something similar) is being held over her face and a third girl pours liquid onto the cloth,” Tucker wrote. “A technique I would call waterboarding.”
Thibault and Northfield Police Chief John Helfant confirmed to VTDigger last week that an unspecified police investigation was ongoing at Norwich, though they declined to elaborate at the time.
On Friday, Helfant told VTDigger that officers were at the campus in Northfield that day to investigate the branding and waterboarding allegations. Officers were working to collect electronic communications and evidence from two residential dorms, he said.
Helfant said the university and his department previously operated under a “verbal MOU,” or memorandum of understanding, that would permit Northfield police to talk to students in their dorm rooms, while accompanied by university public safety during criminal investigations.
That’s what took place on March 22, the police chief said. But as of March 25, that access was denied for the investigation.
Norwich University “was only willing to have students come away from their residences and meet us at a conference room,” Helfant wrote. “There are a host of issues which this presents for law enforcement.”
As a result, according to the police chief, the department secured warrants to access the dorm rooms and electronic communications.
Daphne Larkin, the university’s director of media relations and community affairs, wrote in a statement on Friday that the university was subject to “federal student privacy laws and other restrictions” regarding what it can disclose.
“Norwich University has fully cooperated with the Northfield Police Department in their investigation of the allegations surrounding this incident while ensuring the constitutional rights of our students and employees,” Larkin wrote.
Thibault said that his reading of federal education law indicates that universities’ public safety institutions have discretion to voluntarily disclose investigative materials or evidence to law enforcement.
“Norwich has decided to err on the side of nondisclosure with the Northfield Police Department,” the prosecutor said, “which unfortunately just serves to complicate investigatory efforts.”
Emails obtained by The Times Argus through a public records request, and later provided by the state’s attorney’s office to VTDigger, revealed that tensions were simmering between the university and law enforcement prior to the hazing probe.
In a Feb. 2 email, Helfant asked Thibault to send a letter to the head of Norwich public safety requesting that the school’s footage from body cameras be submitted to Northfield police in criminal cases.
And on Feb. 18, Thibault wrote to the university recommending that its public safety department reach a memorandum of understanding on an “efficient process” to provide body footage to Northfield police.
Lawrence Rooney, the university’s chief of security, later replied that “we are not interested in entering into a MOU with Northfield Police Dept.” Rooney added at that time that if the state’s attorney’s office needed body camera footage from an earlier incident on campus unrelated to the hazing investigation it would require a subpoena.
“Thank you again for your explanation of the law and process,” Rooney wrote to the prosecutor.
Both Helfant and Thibault said Friday that they could not provide additional details into the hazing probe.
“The evidence collected will be assessed and the investigation continues at this time,” Helfant wrote in an email.
Read the story on VTDigger here: Branding, waterboarding allegations at center of Norwich University rugby hazing probe.