8 High School Students Held in Rape, Assault Case : Violence: Lakewood gang allegedly kept score on ‘conquests.’ One victim was only 10, investigators say.

In a case that authorities said may soon widen, eight current or former Lakewood High School students were arrested Thursday for participating in a gang whose members allegedly raped or molested girls to collect “points” in a long-running contest of sexual conquests.

According to Los Angeles County sheriff’s investigators, the gang’s sexual exploitations extended over at least five months late last year and may involve scores of victims. So far, seven girls, one of whom was only 10 when the attempted rape occurred, have been identified as victims, deputies said. Others involved were 14, 15 and 16 years old.

“We feel it’s the tip of the iceberg,” said Detective Doug Blaydes, one of two lead investigators in the case. “We feel there are more suspects out there and more victims. This investigation is nowhere near over.”

Blaydes, who called the case unique in his 21 years as an officer, said the continuing investigation will examine whether Lakewood High School administrators illegally withheld information about the attacks from authorities, perhaps to protect the confidentiality of the girls involved. Lakewood Principal Mike Escalante strongly denied that contention Thursday after cooperating with officers who arrested three students during morning classes.

The case was considered especially startling because Lakewood, a largely middle-class and blue-collar community northeast of Long Beach, has almost no history of gang troubles. The city, home to 74,000 residents, is largely free of graffiti and crime rates are low. Lakewood High, a school of 4,000 students, is known for its high academic standards and excellent graduation rates, and for its consistently competitive football and baseball teams.

Deputies learned of the case two weeks ago when the mother of a former gang member spoke out during a meeting to discuss other disciplinary problems involving the gang, said Lt. Joseph R. Surgent of the sheriff’s child abuse detail.

“At that point, we had no idea about the sexual conquests,” Surgent said, adding that investigators now suspect one gang member may have accumulated as many as 70 points, or 70 individual sexual contacts.

“You can only get one point per girl” if you are in the gang, Surgent said. “If you have sex with a girl twice, it doesn’t count (the second time). . . . No matter who we questioned, victim-wise, they all knew that there was a score system, that these guys were just out to gain points. No caring, no nothing.”

Blaydes said members of the gang, known as the Spur Posse, apparently gained the cooperation and silence of their victims by winning the girls’ consent or, failing that, through intimidation.

“Some victims said if they did not allow (the gang members) to score their point, then the Posse would be back to hurt them,” Blaydes said. At least two victims said they were verbally threatened, although they were never told the repercussions for refusing to engage in sex, the detective said.

“People knew the Posse was into violence,” Blaydes added. “They represented themselves as a violent group.”

But one 16-year-old suspected gang member, who spoke outside the school before he was arrested, denied that members of the Spur Posse committed rape or other sexual assault.

“We don’t do any of the stuff they’re saying,” he said. He acknowledged, however, that at least a few of the 25 to 50 members kept track of their sexual conquests, which in the case of one teen-ager numbered 20.

“But they wouldn’t do it without (the girls’) consent,” he said. The totals were sometimes the topic of conversation among members. “People would say: ‘Oh, I got a new one’--something like that.”

A few suspects were football players, but school administrators said they were unaware of how many of the arrested students were members of athletic teams.

Sheriff’s deputies, who were still seeking a 16-year-old suspect who did not report to class Thursday, released the name of only one suspect--Kristopher Bellman, 18. The identities of the others were withheld because they are juveniles.

Although all the students grew up in the community and attended Lakewood High School, some were no longer enrolled at the school. One student was arrested at nearby Millikan High School and another was taken into custody at Jordan High School, both in Long Beach, deputies said. Others were arrested at their homes.

Investigators planned to present the case this morning to the district attorney’s office. They are seeking 17 felony counts: 10 charges of rape by intimidation, one of forcible rape, four of unlawful intercourse, one of oral copulation and one of child molestation involving the 10-year-old.

According to authorities, the Spur Posse was formed several years ago, taking its name from the San Antonio Spurs professional basketball team. The gang began to attract attention last fall because of the alleged involvement of some members in a number of residential burglaries and other crimes, including forgery, said Sgt. Steve Manthorne.

At least two suspects have juvenile records--one for grand theft and another for assault--and two gang members were victims in a pair of car firebombings in January that caused no injuries, Blaydes said. But investigators were unable to provide information Thursday about the extent of the gang’s criminal history.

Among students, the Spur Posse is known as a group made up of mostly good-looking athletes who kept track of their sexual conquests, according to several female students who declined to be identified.

“I have friends who were beaten up and raped by them,” said one 16-year-old. “If a girl would not sleep with them, they would beat her up.”

Other students, however, defended members of the Spur Posse and questioned the validity of the charges.

“We have gangsters who carry around guns all day and they’re going after guys who went with girls,” said Lakewood High School junior Raymond Dietrich.

The gang was known for throwing big parties and charging $3 at the door to pay for a band and beer kegs, students said. The boys often paired up to have sex with girls at the parties or at the girls’ homes, friends conceded, but they were not unique in trying to get girls into bed.

“More than three-quarters of the guys in school will have sex with anything they can,” said a 16-year-old junior girl. “These guys just call themselves a name.”

“Girls like them,” said Dietrich, who added that his grades kept him off the football team this fall but said that he plans to play as next year. “I wouldn’t call it dating. Just a whole bunch of one night stands.”

Mike McMahon, a junior at the school and a linebacker on the football team, was one of several friends who described the sex acts as consensual on the part of the girls.

“When they’re having sex, it’s sex,” he said. “It’s a rape afterward when they’re embarrassed and they change their minds.”

Another student, 18-year-old Kasey Catlin, who called himself a friend of some of the suspects, said: “There’s always locker room talk (about sexual conquests). ‘I went to bed with so and so.’ But not, ‘I drug her to bed.’ ”

Several girls attending the high school, including two who called themselves former girlfriends of one suspect, described the Spur Posse as “cool” and “nice guys.” They blamed the victims for charging the boys with a serious crime when the incidents included sex, but not force, they said.

“Half those girls have a reputation but their parents still think they’re virgins,” said a 17-year-old senior who asked that her name not be used. “I’ve had friends who had sex with them.”

The 16-year-old junior said she had dated one of the boys arrested Thursday. Although he asked her to sleep with him, she did not and was never forced to, she said.

“I’m little and he could have done anything he wanted to. And he didn’t,” she said. “I said no. He never made me. He never tried to make me. . . . They would beg you to. But they wouldn’t hurt you.”

The 16-year-old said that on Monday she saw one of the girls talking to police officers in the school office. When she came out crying, the girl talked to her.

“When she first told me about the incident, she didn’t call it rape then,” she said. “She said she was willing at the time but afterward she regretted it. I told her to think about what she’s doing.

“I don’t believe anybody can force you to that point unless they hurt you,” she said.

In making the arrests, sheriff’s deputies deliberately surprised Lakewood High School officials, fearing that the school’s administrators would not cooperate. Investigators expressed suspicion that school officials were told about the alleged rapes by victims but withheld the information--in violation of California laws requiring mandatory reporting of assaults.

Deputies said they will investigate whether charges should be filed against school officials. But after conferring with school principal Escalante during the arrests, Surgent conceded that the suspicions may have been based on rumors.

Escalante said the school was in frequent contact with deputies about the gang in recent months, but that no one knew of the alleged rapes. “There was absolutely no cover-up,” he said.

Lakewood seems an unlikely setting for the arrests that took place Thursday. It has the serene look and feel of the ‘50s suburb it is. Most of its modest, stucco tract houses were built between 1950 and 1954 for workers at nearby aerospace plants. An estimated 2,000 of its 26,000 households depend on McDonnell Douglas for paychecks.

“Lakewood is a very nice community to live in,” said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Sgt. Steve Manthorne, who works out of the Lakewood Station. “It’s a good place to raise a family. I would say the crime is less than in other bedroom communities.”

Long Beach shoppers who refuse to go to their own downtown mall for fear of crime go to Lakewood Mall, which supplies the city with a quarter of its general fund income.

Part of the Long Beach Unified School District, Lakewood High has for years bused in students from crowded areas in the district. About a quarter of its students live outside the city, many of them in the immigrant neighborhoods of western Long Beach. As a result, the student body spans a wide ethnic mix of Anglos, Latinos, African-Americans and Asian-Americans.

“You have far fewer incidents at Lakewood than is typical for a large urban high school in California,” said Richard Van Der Lann, a school district spokesman. “It has a reputation for being a safe school.”

Staff writer Bettina Boxall and correspondent Kirsten Lee Swartz contributed to this story.