Even though he grew up in Minnesota, Danny Santulli chose to follow his older siblings’ footsteps and attend the University of Missouri.

He loved sports and hanging out with his friends and family, and never got in any serious trouble.

But early in his freshman year at Mizzou, a horrific hazing incident destroyed his life.

When Danny started college in 2021, he wanted to join a fraternity like his older brother, Nick. Nick had pledged Pi Kappa Alpha; he'd had a great experience and made lifelong friends.

Danny pledged Phi Delta Gamma, known as Fiji. Within weeks of joining, a hazing event left then-19-year-old Danny with severe brain damage -- unable to see, walk or speak.

Several members of the fraternity were later charged in the incident, including Ryan P. Delanty of Manchester, Missouri, and Thomas Shultz of Chesterfield, Missouri. Danny's family settled a civil lawsuit against the fraternity and 23 members.

Lawsuit documents detail the events leading up to Oct. 19, 2021, when Danny attended “pledge dad reveal night” at the Fiji house. Delanty handed him a bottle of Tito’s vodka, which was then taped to Danny’s hands. He was ordered to drink it. Another member poured beer into his mouth with a funnel and a tube. Members left Danny sitting on a couch with a blood-alcohol level of 0.468%. He ended up lying face-down on the floor with blue lips and pale skin, the lawsuit says.

No one called 911. Fraternity members eventually drove him to the hospital. The incident was recorded on surveillance video.

Danny's family offered victim impact statements at Delanty's sentencing hearing last week. He pleaded guilty in Boone County Circuit Court to supplying liquor to a minor and to a reduced misdemeanor charge of hazing.

Prosecutors recommended six months of jail time for Delanty.

David Bianchi, the family’s lawyer, has represented hazing victims for decades and says Danny's are the worst hazing injuries he’s ever seen. He says curtailing hazing on campuses requires, first, that universities take swift action to expel the students involved.

“They almost never do that,” he said, because the schools fear pressure from the Greek community and donors.

Secondly, Bianchi said, prosecutors must act aggressively in bringing charges rather than offering plea deals that are just a slap on the wrist for these serious crimes.

Danny’s aunt Chrissy Prioleau says she has connected with families whose children have died due to hazing incidents. Most of them are still waiting for any kind of justice, she said. In some states, hazing is a misdemeanor offense.

“People have died, and it’s like giving a traffic ticket,” she said. One of the most heartbreaking experiences for her family has been the silence from Danny’s so-called “brothers” in the fraternity.

"You want someone to say, 'I’m sorry,'" she said. "We never got it." In fact, even the families they had known prior to the incident who had sons in the fraternity went silent. She is convinced that if there hadn’t been video evidence of that night, no one would have faced any consequences for her nephew’s life-altering injuries.

“It’s been 31 months that we’ve been waiting for justice for Danny,” she said.

Tom Santulli, Danny’s father, said they had no idea how Danny was being treated during the monthslong initiation. In texts discovered on his phone after he was hospitalized, Fiji members had frequently ordered Danny to the house, telling him to bring them booze and weed -- even when he would say he needed to study.

They told him to stand in a garbage can with broken glass that led to him needing stitches on his foot, Tom said. They indoctrinated members on a code of silence.

Tom wants college students considering Greek life, and their parents, to do research on the groups before they join. He had coached Danny's basketball team and dreamed of his son’s bright future. Danny had considered majoring in business like his older brother.

Now, he requires 24-hour care at home.

“I’m still devastated,” Tom said. “His life was taken away.”

University of Missouri spokesman Christian Basi said the university acted swiftly when it learned about the incident. They removed the Fiji frat from campus. The MU police arrested several of the members involved. The school instituted training and education on alcohol poisoning for students, along with information on how to recognize hazing and report it.

Changing the culture around hazing requires stronger action from universities and prosecutors, better awareness among parents and students, and a complete mindset change among Greek leadership and members.

A “brotherhood” does not seek to humiliate, harm or hurt its brethren.

Many parents struggle to get young children to eat their vegetables, but Beth Xenos has the furthest thing from a picky eater.

Her 4-year-old son, Pete, has discovered a taste for cicadas.

Xenos, a stay-at-home mom, was driving Pete to preschool when they heard a radio interview about using the emerging periodical cicadas, which have arrived by the billions, as a source of food. Her son paid close attention. They had noticed the hordes of red-eyed flying insects covering the trees in their neighborhood.

About a week later, Pete asked how they could catch some of the bugs to try and cook them. Xenos explained that the insects are slow-moving, so they could scoop them up in a plastic container.

While more than 1 billion people in other parts of the world eat various insects as either a source of protein or as a delicacy, the same can’t be said for the Western palate. Evidence shows that insects were a common part of our ancestors’ diets. So, what changed?

Anthropologists suggest that the aversion to bugs as food stems from different geography, history and cultural norms. In the warm tropics, where bugs thrive, they are larger and more meal-worthy than in temperate zones, where many lie dormant or die in winter. In colder climates, our earliest ancestors relied on animal meat for survival rather than bugs, which were not as accessible. When European colonizers encountered cultures in which eating insects was part of the traditional diet, they saw them as inferior, leading to a long-held stigma against the practice.

These cultural biases are often passed down from parent to child. But that’s not always the case.

When Pete expressed an interest in tasting cicadas, his mom looked up recipes online, and together they collected a few from outside. She boiled them, salted them and offered them with a side of olive oil for dipping. She and her husband watched in disbelief as their son calmly dipped a cicada in the oil and took a bite.

“I was really impressed with him being able to try it,” Xenon said. Pete's parents are proud of his adventurous palate. He will gladly snack on radishes, kalamata olives and dried seaweed.

Pete ate about a dozen cicadas the first time he tried them, and even requested them again the next day.

When I asked him how they taste, he said they are “awesome.”

His endorsement has not convinced his parents or 7-year-old sister to try a cooked cicada. His mom is trying to curb his enthusiasm for eating the bugs. She wants to make sure he doesn't eat too many and get an upset stomach. She might prepare a cicada snack once or twice more while they are in season, so to speak.

“It’s not an everyday thing, for sure,” she said. “It’s a treat.”

Pete’s recommendation hasn’t lessened my personal discomfort -- or, dare I say, disgust -- with the flying bugs. However, his experience is an example of how social norms around food can evolve. At his young age, he hasn’t been as intensely indoctrinated as most of us on the issue of eating bugs. His parents’ supportive response to his curiosity allowed him to try something different without fear of being judged.

Those who advocate for Westerners to get over their bug phobia and be more open to them as an environmentally friendly source of protein point out that tastes can change, citing the history of sushi in America as a prime example. It went from nearly unheard of 50 years ago to completely mainstream today.

It’s questionable whether periodical cicadas could undergo the same cultural shift. For one thing, their life cycle only brings them above ground every 13 or 17 years, limiting most people's exposure to the insects. The negative associations and perceived threats from bugs in general -- especially those that sting and bite -- are far more ingrained and widespread than those against raw fish.

But if cicadas ever do transform from noisy, creepy pests to culinary delights, Pete will be known as an early adopter.

Natalie Wanzel, 34, knew she had been adopted at 3 years old from an orphanage in Russia in 1992.

She had been told that she was born with serious health problems to a young woman who could not afford to take care of her. Her American adoptive parents brought her to suburban St. Louis, where she grew up in a caring, middle-class family.

In 2018, Wanzel did an AncestryDNA kit in the hopes of finding a genetic relative. She uploaded her DNA results into the MyHeritage DNA database, which has millions of registered users. For five years, no close relatives matched.

In January 2023, she got a match: She had a half-sister in Canada, with whom she shared a biological father. Wanzel also learned she was not Russian: She was actually from Georgia in Eastern Europe.

She joined a Facebook group for Georgian adoptees searching for biological relatives. She posted a short query with basic information about who she was trying to find. The next morning, she woke up to a stream of congratulatory messages.

One of the group's administrators had found her biological mother.

Her mother’s story unraveled everything Wanzel had believed to be true about the circumstances around her birth and adoption.

“I found out I was a child stolen and sold in Moscow, Russia,” Wanzel said.

Her adoptive parents, who declined to be interviewed, had no idea she had been taken from her birth mother under false pretenses.

Wanzel discovered that she was one of tens of thousands of children in Georgia taken from the country’s maternity hospitals and sold in a decades-long black market adoption scandal. Hospital workers lied to thousands of birth mothers about their babies, often telling them their children had died after birth, according to these mothers.

Those “dead” babies have grown into adults armed with DNA test results to expose a nation’s dark past.

“Betrayal at Birth: Georgia’s Stolen Children,” a BBC World Service documentary by filmmakers Fay Nurse and Woody Morris, released in January, shares the stories of those children -- now adults -- and their biological families torn apart by the baby trafficking scandal.

For Wanzel, the discovery allowed her to hear her birth story from her biological mother, through translators. At first, Wanzel couldn’t understand why her mother, who wants to keep her name private, kept crying.

As a young, unwed pregnant woman, her mother was sent to Moscow to deliver due to the social stigma in Georgia, she told Wanzel. When her labor began, the hospital put her under anesthesia. She woke up asking to see her baby. The staff told her the baby was too sick, and that she had been deemed unfit to care for her.

“She asked nurse after nurse; no one would say anything,” Wanzel said. Her birth mother returned to Georgia never having seen her baby.

“Looking back, it makes sense that she was so emotional to find out that I was alive,” Wanzel said.

The Facebook group “Vedzeb,” which means “I’m searching” in Georgian, now has more than 240,000 members and features posts from adopted people around the world -- including the United States -- who believe they may have been illegally adopted and are looking for biological family members.

Georgian journalist Tamuna Museridze began the group in 2021 after discovering she had been adopted. She found her birth certificate, with incorrect details, after her (adoptive) mother died.

Museridze says her research suggests the black market in adoptions took place across Georgia from the early 1950s to 2005, with stolen babies flown from Georgia to Russia to be sold and adopted by unsuspecting American parents.

Her outspoken advocacy on behalf of children and their mothers has changed the culture and stigmas around adoption in Georgia.

“Five or six years ago, it was a shame to say you were adopted,” she said. “We worked really hard to change the view of adoption.” The Georgian government opened an investigation in 2022 into historic child trafficking, but has said the cases are too old to be prosecuted as there is little evidence left.

Museridze has confronted doctors who were involved and asked them why they did this to so many people.

“They say, 'Why are you complaining? You all went to good families because only rich families could afford to buy a stolen child. Why are you complaining?'”

She rejects this explanation. After her mother died, she learned from older relatives that her parents had been told, “We have one healthy baby for sale, so you can come buy her.”

“It’s not normal that you can go buy a child,” Museridze said.