Read heartbreaking words of pledge who was tortured by Jon Hamm

Daily Mail​

23-04-2025

A young fraternity pledge described brutal torture he allegedly suffered at the hands of Hollywood actor Jon Hamm.
Mark Allen Sanders' heartbreaking account details how he was beaten with a paddle, dragged around a room by his genitals and had his pants set on fire during the horrific hazing ordeal, of which Hamm was the ringleader.
Golden Globe winner Hamm was identified as one of seven Sigma Nu brothers who tormented and humiliated Sanders when he was a young pledge at the University of Texas at Austin in 1990.
Hamm was arrested for alleged assault in 1993 and while the charge was dismissed, he completed a period of probation instead of receiving a conviction for hazing.
Sanders shared chilling details of his nightmare with investigators at Travis County's Attorney's Office, which were recorded in a transcript obtained by DailyMail.com and our columnist Maureen Callahan, who is also the host of The Nerve podcast.
He described how he was beaten so savagely for forgetting to use Hamm's nickname, MC Hammer, that he sustained a broken spine and kidney damage.
'He hits me right over my right kidney. I mean, square over it. Good, solid hit. And that stood me up,' Sanders said.
'I'm hurting bad. I mean, being hit right where the kidney is, it's killing me.'
Mark Sanders was hit so hard during the warped 1990 initiation that he suffered a fractured spine and nearly lost a kidney
Hamm was accused of carrying out horrific abuse against a Sigma Nu pledge while a frat boy at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1990s
The star and an accomplice then allegedly wrenched Sanders' underwear and moved it back and forth in a painful sawing motion.
'The more they pulled, the way they were pulling was one would be pulling up,' Sanders continued.
'I don't know how far underwear stretches, I don't know how far I was off the ground.
'I was hurting really bad and I remember I was looking up at the ceiling and I was gritting my teeth and squinting my eyes ... it was sawing and it was hurting.'
But the ordeal did not end there, with Sanders forced to cram into a dirty, confined space known as 'the pit' and perform pushups.
'They were actually pushing my face to get in the dirt. He told me to get my face in the dirt,' Sanders recalled.
'And then all the pledges are taken out of there, except me. I'm left in there with Jon Hamm.'
He describes how he began struggling to stand due to the excruciating pain.
'This is when Jon Hamm pulls out a lighter, and he puts his lighter on. And I was wearing designer jeans, and I have this loop on the front, and he took the lighter and caught that on fire,' Sanders explained.
'My head is down. I mean, my chin is in the chest at this point, I see him light the lighter and put it to my pants.
'I was kind of panicking, because I was wearing a cotton t-shirt. I actually tried to put it out with my hands, and Jon Hamm wouldn't let me. He made me blow it out with my mouth.'
Finally he was led upstairs to the 'party room' when Hamm hooked the claw of a hammer underneath his testicles and pulled him around the room 'for at least a minute'.
The abuse left Sanders with severe internal damage, bruising and even broken bones.
'My kidney spasms and it re bruises itself,' Sanders said. 'He told me it was from being hit right over the kidney. I can remember feeling being hit hard right over this.'
He also described how he was beaten with a broomstick, 'right over my rib cage whenever I breathe, my lung actually can't go all the way because it's pinned between my rib cage from I assume it was beaten down some beaten into me'.
Sanders subsequently withdrew from the university and sought counselling to cope with the shameful episode, which resulted in a police inquiry and the fraternity chapter being disbanded.
Students Matthew Dennis, Richard Asel, Todd Bowden and and Christopher Temple pleaded no contest to hazing charges over the savage ordeal, My San Antonio reports.
Dennis, Temple, and Asel were ordered to jail time and fined $500 court costs as part of a plea deal.
Bowden received a probationary sentence and a $500 fine.
Charges were filed against Hamm and two other fraternity members. Hamm received deferred adjudication and completed probation in connection with the charges.
Sanders later launched a lawsuit against Sigma Nu seeking 'unspecified actual and exemplary damages for willful and wanton misconduct'.
It was dismissed with the agreement of both parties, however, in 1993, possibly signaling that an out-of-court settlement had been reached.
Hamm didn't comment on the story when it emerged in 2015. In 2018, Hamm issued a half-baked non-denial.
He summarized the bullying and torture as a 'bummer of a thing that happened' and insisting Sanders' claims are not all accurate, without elaborating further.