COLUMN ONE : Fraternity Conduct Raises Row : Is a socially prestigious group at USC getting special treatment? Police officials, fraternity members deny favoritism.

The route from USC’s fraternity row to the 901 Club on Figueroa Street is marked by broad painted stripes running three blocks, a symbol of the bar’s importance to the social life of the campus’ affluent “Greeks.”

The “9-Oh,” as the raucous college bar is affectionately known, is where inhibitions, like IDs, are checked at the door.

For one fraternity--the prestigious and well-connected Alpha Tau Omega house--it is a path well traveled.

It is inside the bar--a place were many campus romances have been kindled--that a sophomore says she was plied with drinks, then escorted to the ATO house, where she alleges that she was being raped by a student when a group of his naked fraternity brothers burst into the room. One of them was the son of a prominent USC trustee.

Frustrated that no arrests were made, the woman has sued the fraternity and nine of its members.

On another evening across the street from the 901 Club, a student was viciously attacked. He almost lost an eye and underwent hours of surgery. His alleged assailant, an ATO fraternity leader and manager of the USC football team, will stand trial next month on charges of slamming his foot into the young man’s face.

On still another night outside the tavern’s front doors, a third student was allegedly ambushed by ATO members. He was knocked to the ground in a fury of fists and feet that also nearly cost him his right eye and required hours of reconstructive surgery.

At the time, his mother was a Los Angeles police commissioner. She is upset that her son’s attackers have not been brought to justice.

Now, at a time when date rape and campus violence are national issues, questions are being raised about whether USC and certain law enforcement officials with ties to the influential university have afforded favorable treatment to the fraternity’s members.

Among other things, the alleged rape has prompted a rare condemnation by two Los Angeles police detectives and their former captain against the Police Department’s hierarchy. They contend that former Deputy Chief William Rathburn, a USC graduate who is active in alumni affairs, effectively scuttled the investigation of the rape, despite their strong objections.

“We should have gone out and made an arrest and treated this exactly like everyone else,” said former Capt. Noel Cunningham, who now heads the Los Angeles port police. “But we treated this case differently, and that bothered me.”

Detective Charlene Laughton added: “If this was a black kid or a Latino kid, we would have arrested him immediately.”

Rathburn, now police chief in Dallas, denies any wrongdoing or favoritism, saying that the case simply was not strong enough to warrant an arrest.

Questions about Chief Daryl F. Gates’ role are also being raised. While the rape case was being pursued by his detectives, the chief solicited fund-raising help from university trustee John C. Argue for last year’s ballot measure to finance a new 911 telephone system. His son, John M. Argue, admittedly organized the naked romp in the fraternity house and was under investigation by city police at the time Gates asked the elder Argue for help, according to department records and interviews.

Gates and the elder Argue deny any favoritism and insist that the investigation was finished when they joined forces on the 911 proposal.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office also has been criticized for refusing to file charges against any of the nine fraternity members present during the alleged rape. Although prosecutors said there was insufficient evidence to file criminal charges, they nonetheless described the conduct of ATO members as reprehensible.

With one exception, the cases did not go before USC’s disciplinary system, created to ensure that campus crime is punished. In the case that was investigated, the university waited months before initiating action against one of the ATO members. ATO itself was cleared of any complicity.

Parents of the victims are outraged by what they see as a breakdown in the entire system.

“I sent my daughter to USC to get an education,” the alleged rape victim’s father said in a letter to Gates. Instead, “I am the one that is getting an education . . . learning of corruption, influence peddling, obstruction of justice and just what segments of Los Angeles society are above the law.”

Reva Tooley, who was a police commissioner at the time her son, Patrick, was assaulted, was more succinct: “I am dismayed by the unwillingness or inability of our institutions to deal with student violence.”

Reacting to the controversy swirling around the ATO and a nationwide rise in campus violence, newly installed USC President Steven Sample has pledged to hold student conduct to the highest of standards.

“We cannot tolerate acts of violence, period,” he told The Times. “And folks who perpetrate acts of violence need to be removed from our academic environment rather quickly.”

Campus Prestige

This week, the university announced the formation of an independent blue-ribbon panel to review school programs for the prevention and treatment of sexual assault.

In response to the allegations, many of ATO’s members have refused to cooperate with authorities, have offered conflicting statements to police and, without exception, have denied any criminal acts.

The fraternity’s chapter president, Matt Tonkovich, disputes characterizations by some police officers that ATO’s lack of cooperation resembles the behavior of illegal street gangs.

“You look at a street gang and they don’t have as much to lose as perhaps guys in this house would,” Tonkovich said, sitting bare-chested on the porch of the fraternity house on 28th Street. “You have people that are trying to put together careers and people who come from established families that would have a lot to lose.”

Along fraternity row, ATO is considered among the most socially prestigious on campus and has a reputation for knowing how to party. While other fraternities posed in suits and ties for annual yearbook photos, the ATOs mugged for the camera in blue jeans and hoisting drinks. Under the photo was the inscription “Thursday Night Fever,” their traditional evening for partying because there are fewer classes on Friday.

In the mid-1980s, the fraternity captured the university’s President Award for outstanding academic and athletic achievement. While their academic standing has slipped, the ATOs still are tops on campus each year in inter-fraternity sports competitions and, with more than 140 members, are the big house on campus.

These days, the ATOs also are the most talked about.

The fraternity first came under scrutiny in April, 1990, when a 19-year-old sophomore from out of state told investigators at the Police Department’s Southwest Division that she had been raped by an ATO member at the fraternity house four months earlier.

She said that ATO members bought her drinks at the 901 Club and that Chris Heath, a 22-year-old USC senior, took her to the fraternity house. She alleges that it was in the room of John M. Argue that Heath removed her clothes and raped her. According to police reports, she said that she was drunk and that she cried and vomited as she tried to resist.

During the assault, she said, eight other ATO members, including John M. Argue, participated in a game they dubbed “playing through,” in which the young men--some of them naked--donned golf caps, carried golf clubs and walked into the room as though they were in a rush to reach the next green.

The student said she dressed and fled the room in tears while the ATO members laughed and jeered.

It took her four months to come forward, she told authorities, because she had been traumatized and humiliated. She said she finally decided to report the incident only after ATO members repeatedly harassed her, pointing and laughing at her on campus.

The police, finding the student’s account credible, launched an immediate investigation, according to officers in the case.

Heath and Argue, both of whom have been named in the woman’s lawsuit, denied the allegations in interviews with police. They also contradicted each other, according to Police Department documents.

The documents quote Heath as saying that the student voluntarily disrobed, consented to sex but said he could not “do it” because she was throwing up and he was too drunk.

Argue, during his police interrogation, acknowledged taking off his clothes and organizing the “playing through” episode. He said it wasn’t the first time.

“This ‘playing through’ is part of university life and happens all over the university,” he said in a signed statement to police. “Sometimes the woman in question will take on other guys (sexually) but I have never experienced it personally.”

Among other contradictions with Heath’s statements, Argue told police that his fraternity brother and the woman had never disrobed.

Heath’s lawyer, Paul Geragos, declined to allow his client to be interviewed. But the lawyer said that whatever happened in the fraternity room that night between Heath and the woman was consensual.

Argue’s father, a longtime USC benefactor and widely known local attorney, told The Times that his 23-year-old son was unavailable for comment. The elder Argue insisted that the statement his son signed was inaccurate and had been dictated to him by police, who would not let him make changes. He declined to elaborate except to say that his son went to the police station as a witness--not a suspect--in an effort to clear Heath.

The senior Argue also disclosed that then-Deputy Police Chief Rathburn telephoned him soon after “to inform me that my son had come in as a witness in this matter without an attorney. He wanted to make sure that I, as a parent, knew that that was going on.”

Interference Charged

Rathburn said he had no hidden agenda for calling Argue. “I knew John Argue and I just thought that he as a parent ought to know of these kinds of activities,” Rathburn said.

Rathburn did not tell officers investigating the case of his private talk with Argue.

“What difference does it make?” he asked. “I don’t think it was important and it didn’t affect the case in any way.”

At the time, Rathburn supervised the Police Department’s South Bureau, which includes the USC campus, and was well-acquainted with Argue, a key player in bringing the 1984 Summer Olympic Games to Los Angeles. Rathburn was in charge of Police Department security for the games.

Rathburn’s ties to USC are also strong. He holds a master’s degree in public administration from USC and, like Chief Gates, is a member of the alumni support group for the university’s school of public administration. He also served on a USC search committee to select a new dean for the public administration school.

Rathburn acknowledges that he paid special attention to the investigation of the alleged rape, noting that campus rape had become a sensitive issue for USC and other universities. Rathburn said the district attorney’s office also had refused to prosecute a prior USC date rape case involving a different fraternity, despite an “excellent investigation” by Southwest Division detectives.

Some of his front-line officers, however, say that Rathburn’s interest in the case amounted to interference.

Eight days into the investigation, the officers let Rathburn know that they felt they had enough evidence to arrest Heath, who, on the advice of his attorney, had declined to follow through on an earlier agreement to take a polygraph test.

The detectives said Rathburn told them that they must first seek an arrest warrant from the district attorney’s office instead of the usual practice of simply making an arrest under their own authority.

The district attorney’s office, with an eye toward convincing a jury, frequently requires a high certainty of guilt before issuing a warrant. Police, for their part, often make arrests when they believe there is simply “probable cause” that the suspect is guilty.

Detective Laughton said she was incensed by Rathburn’s directive.

“I said, ‘Wait a minute. I have to get permission (from the district attorney) to arrest a white student from USC?’ ” she recalled telling her immediate superiors. “I didn’t understand that. It’s not normal. We’ve never had to do this before.”

She said she and other officers knew they didn’t have a “snowball’s chance” of getting a warrant and said they needed to arrest Heath to see if he would confess or incriminate his fraternity brothers or both. It was a tactic that some officers have found to work in difficult cases.

Laughton, her partner, Detective Bill Pavelic, and Lt. Kerstein sought advice from their captain, Noel Cunningham.

Cunningham, who left the department last fall, agreed that arresting Heath might “shake him loose.”

But according to Cunningham, Rathburn again blocked an arrest by the officers without a warrant from prosecutors, saying that it would be “too embarrassing to the kid and the school” if the district attorney did not follow through and bring charges.

“We should have gone out and made an arrest and treated this exactly like everyone else,” Cunningham said. “But we treated this case differently and that bothered me. I told Bill Rathburn that . . . I felt uncomfortable with his position and that didn’t seem to bother him. . . .” He said he came close to ordering the arrest anyway but decided not to contradict his superior.

When Cunningham told the investigators about Rathburn’s decision, Laughton, whose beat includes the largely minority neighborhoods around USC, said she replied:

“If this was a black kid or a Latino kid, we would have arrested him immediately.’ In 10 1/2 years (on the Police Department) I’ve never had to get permission to arrest anyone.”

Gates, hearing through other officers of the detectives’ unhappiness, met with two of them, who openly complained about Rathburn’s alleged intervention.

Gates, in an interview with The Times, backed his deputy chief.

“Rathburn gave me his reasons (and) I thought they were appropriate,” Gates said. “He probably was much more correct than the detectives. On the other hand, the detectives may have gotten some results from the arrest.”

In June, the district attorney’s office rejected the case and described a number of deficiencies, including the lack of medical evidence, the delay in reporting the alleged crime and the fact that the victim had been drinking heavily--reasons often cited in decisions not to prosecute rape cases.

When the district attorney rejected the case, detectives turned to the city attorney’s office, hoping that misdemeanor lewd conduct charges might be brought against those allegedly involved, possibly including Argue and others.

Last fall, while the detectives were helping the city attorney’s office with its investigation, Chief Gates sought fund-raising help from John C. Argue on the 911 bond measure. The elder Argue agreed to join other community leaders in soliciting campaign contributions from local businesses.

Gates said he has known Argue and his son for years. But he insisted that he did not permit either the need for fund-raising help or his relationship with Argue to affect the department’s handling of the case.

“I don’t care whose son it is, we do our job,” Gates said. “If we find something, we’ll prosecute.”

Investigators Frustrated

Although Gates said Argue wanted to avoid any conflicts and reminded the chief about his son’s predicament, Argue said during one interview that he had no recollection of such a conversation. “I never brought it to his attention,” Argue said.

But in an interview Wednesday, he acknowledged that “there was an oblique reference--just in passing.”

Argue and Gates said the chief did not ask for help on the 911 proposal until “after it (the investigation) was all over.”

However, internal Police Department documents show that the investigation was still under way. The Police Department’s investigative findings were not presented to the city attorney’s office until Nov. 12, a week after the election for which Argue helped raise funds. The case was not closed by the city attorney’s office until January, according to a letter written by Capt. W.O. Gartland, on behalf of Gates, to the alleged victim’s father.

As the city attorney’s investigationreached a dead end, some officials began to feel frustrated that they were unable to confidently prosecute the ATO members.

“They (ATOs) flat out did not cooperate at all,” including those who had no involvement in the case, said Detective Steven Laird, who investigated the case for the city attorney. “I tried to deal with them as individuals and as a group and got absolutely no cooperation from them.”

Said Deputy City Atty. Ruth Ebner, who was in charge of the case for her office: “I think anyone looking at the history (of the case) would have been insulted, offended and outraged.”

But her office was unable to determine that a specific crime occurred. “Embarrassment and bad taste and neolithic mentality is not against the law,” she said. “We tried to get something filed against some of these people because we were all offended.”

Authorities would soon come in contact again with the fraternity for new reasons.

Last November, Michael Lee, a 21-year-old USC senior, was severely beaten about midnight outside Carmel’s, an all-night restaurant a block from USC’s fraternity row and across from the 901 Club.

An ATO member named Vincent Terrasi, who was manager of the USC football team and the fraternity’s pledge chairman, was arrested on charges of kicking Lee with such force that bones shattered around his eye, requiring hours of surgery.

The president of Lee’s fraternity called then-ATO President Chris Young the next morning to complain. Lee filed reports with the police and asked the university to discipline Terrasi, a step that was not undertaken for nearly six months.

Two weeks later, Pat Tooley, the son of then-police Commissioner Reva Tooley, was also attacked and kicked outside the 901. He suffered eye injuries almost identical to Lee’s. Again, it took hours of surgery to save his eye and reconstruct the bones in his face.

A friend who tried to come to Tooley’s aid also was hit but was not seriously injured.

Although as many as four or five men may have been involved in the Tooley attack, witnesses identified only two from photographs--both of them ATO members. They were subsequently arrested and released without criminal charges being filed. The investigation has not been closed.

One of those arrested was Mark Johnstone, the son of a 30-year Police Department veteran, Robert W. Johnstone. His mother, Sharian Berg, is an administrative assistant at USC. Mark Johnstone has admitted to police that he was present at the Lee beating but said he was not at the scene of the Tooley attacks.

The other student arrested was Joshua Kline, the son of former USC professor Robert D. Kline.

In an interview with The Times, Kline said he was not at the bar that night.

Detectives suspect that the Tooley attack may have been a case of mistaken identity. It is possible, they said, that the attackers sought revenge against Lee for his fraternity’s complaint to the ATOs and for his own efforts to seek a police investigation and disciplinary action from the university.

Both Lee and Tooley are blond, slender and tall. Lee was fearful enough of another attack that he moved far off campus, arranged his classes so that he returned as infrequently as possible and tried to avoid USC until his graduation in May.

Despite three separate Police Department investigations, including a final one by the robbery homicide division, the district attorney’s office declined to file charges in the Tooley case. Prosecutors said a major problem was the fact that Kline supplied a list of alibi witnesses who appeared to clear Kline and Johnstone.

When the district attorney’s office declined to prosecute, Kline filed suit in federal court alleging false arrest by the Police Department. In an interview, he said he believed former police commissioner Tooley unduly influenced the police to arrest him because of her authority over the department--an allegation she denies.

“In this matter I have not been a police commissioner but a mother whose heart was filled with grief over the violent, unprovoked attack on her son,” Tooley said.

Campus officials at USC never investigated the Tooley beating. In the assault on Lee, a student conduct hearing was not held until just before the suspect and victim graduated in May. The investigation cleared the ATO house of any wrongdoing, but university officials would not release its findings on individual members.

“It’s all pretty upsetting and my parents are enraged,” Lee said.

Said Pat Tooley: “Although USC is an exceptional place for an education, I feel they have a serious problem in the way they deal with these types of incidents.”

University officials said it is up to the campus crime victims to initiate disciplinary action, which was not done by the alleged rape victim or Tooley. Both did not want to interfere with the police investigations.

“The burden rests with the student to initiate the action,” said Valerie O. Paton, an assistant dean for student affairs who administers the student discipline program. “The responsibility of (USC) is to provide an environment for fair adjudication.”

The so-called “date rape” case has produced changes at USC. In February, Paton and other officials adopted a mandatory hearing system for sexual abuse cases. The hearing would have to be held within five days after USC learned of the incident, regardless of its possible impact on any criminal case.

Meanwhile, almost all of those named in the beatings and alleged rape have graduated and the current ATO leadership said it has taken steps to repair both the fraternity’s damaged reputation and its dilapidated appearance.

The ATOs sponsored a seminar on drunk driving, another on drugs and alcohol and a third, in conjunction with a sorority, on rape.

“We all know that we didn’t do anything wrong,” said Jeff Sanders, the ATO’s rush and social chairman.

“But,” he added, “some people think we did.”