Word Traveled Slowly in Rape Case : Crime: The report of the assault on the Orange Coast College campus more than 10 days ago is just now being spread among the students.

Word was just trickling down to students at Orange Coast College Thursday about a violent crime that took place more than 10 days ago--the abduction of a female student from a campus parking lot in broad daylight that ended in her rape nearby.

Students said they were concerned about the delay, and administrators acknowledged that they should have acted faster to inform everyone of the attack.

“In retrospect, we would put flyers up sooner,” college President David Grant said.

On March 11 at about 3 p.m., police said a 22-year-old student was abducted from the parking lot on Adams Avenue. An unarmed male assailant forced her to drive to the parking lot of a nearby Lucky market on Harbor Boulevard, where he raped her, took her money and fled.

On Thursday, many students still had not heard about the incident or had just noticed it in the weekly campus newspaper, which came out Wednesday. “I just saw the headlines,” said Amy Montano, 18, a freshman from Santa Ana. “Students should be notified right away.”

Dawn Arge, 20, a sophomore from Huntington Beach, did not know about the incident but said she would have preferred to have been alerted earlier for her own safety.

The victim reported the rape to Costa Mesa police, who did not inform campus authorities, according to Sharon Donoff, vice president for student services.

John Farmer, chief of campus security, said an anonymous caller who identified herself as a friend of the victim told him of the incident the day after it happened. He confirmed it with Costa Mesa police and informed administrators the next day, March 13, a Wednesday.

But administrators did not inform the campus newspaper, the Coast Report, until the following Tuesday, March 19, and the first word that most students had of the incident was when the paper came out on Wednesday.

“It’s unfortunate that I wasn’t here last week,” said Donoff, who added that she was out of town. However, she said that as soon as she received a copy of the police composite sketch, she made 400 copies and distributed them to campus offices and faculty, asking them to get the word out to students.

“The concern was to see if we could identify (the assailant) right away,” Grant said, adding that administrators “increased security patrols as soon as we heard about it” and gave the campus newspaper all the information available.

“We have no reason to hide anything,” Grant said.

“The biggest problem I see (in alerting students promptly) is that the victim never called the college,” Donoff said.

But she also said the college and the Costa Mesa police have “a little philosophical difference” over how much information to release. While college officials “want students to be informed and on the alert, the police don’t want to alert the attacker that they know as much about him as they do,” she explained.

Jim Carnett, director of community relations, said the last reported violent crimes on campus were a rape and an assault in 1983.