COLUMN ONE : A Stain Spreads in Suburbia : Issues of teen promiscuity, forced sex and parental neglect rock Lakewood, once a bastion of morality. Many see the town and its unrepentant Spur Posse as symbols of a declining America.

By DAVID FERRELL and SOMINI SENGUPTA

April 6, 1993 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITERS

The bomb--made from an eight-inch length of pipe--was detonated on a porch at 3 in the morning. The force shattered the tranquil night near Lakewood High School, blowing out windows, knocking down a porch stanchion and punching holes in the home’s beige stucco large enough to reach a fist through.

“It was intended to kill,” concluded Sgt. Larry Crookshanks of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s arson-explosives detail, who learned that the Feb. 12 explosion was directed at teen-age members of the Spur Posse. So ominous was the word on the streets that Crookshanks spoke at a specially convened meeting of Spurs’ parents on March 2, warning that smoldering fires were about to erupt.

The meeting, however, became noteworthy for another bombshell: the disclosure that several underage girls had talked of being raped by some of the Spurs. Those allegations and nine subsequent arrests touched off a sex and violence scandal that has turned the usually placid suburb, an all but forgotten corner of the Los Angeles metropolis, from a Mayberry to a Peyton Place.

All of a sudden, in a glaring media spotlight, Lakewood stands as a reluctant symbol of declining America. Sex sprees, violence and turmoil were about the last things many residents might have expected in the mostly white, middle-class community--the prototype of the modern California suburb when it was laid out on nine square miles of sugar beet fields in the early 1950s. What the founders created--a verdant sprawl of parks, ball diamonds and quiet streets--seemed all but immune to today’s spreading plague of gang warfare. If any city could make the claim, Lakewood remained Norman Rockwell’s America, a family place, as solid a bastion of traditional ethical values as might be found.

But no more. The innocence has given way to hard questions and self-searching. Residents talk fearfully, and some escort their teen-agers to school because of recent street fights and alleged threats of retribution--all involving mostly white youths raised without financial hardship, the products of fine schools. Issues of promiscuity, forced sex and parental neglect are out in the open.

“Society is changing, and the values and morals are being completely washed under the table,” said Tami Walters, 35, a Lakewood homeowner who was outraged enough to organize one of several parents meetings about the scandal. “If you ask anybody, they say . . . ‘I moved to Lakewood (because) the schools are good, it’s a good community.’ Now people are saying they want to move somewhere else.

“People are too busy to want to open their eyes and wake up to the realities that are going on.”

With their brash claims that they had slept with, in some cases, 60 or more young women, members of the Spurs raised troubling questions about the sexual identities and mores of boys and girls, AIDS and the apparently lax attitudes of many rogue youths toward safe sex. Although the use of condoms has become common, students said, there are teen-agers who brag of never using them.

“Most girls wouldn’t say no if a guy doesn’t use a condom, especially if the girl is drunk,” said one 14-year-old girl. “And people drink a lot at parties.”

At the high school, where rumor and gossip ran rampant, many students staunchly defended the Spurs and denounced their accusers as “whores.” Many students, saying the issue has been overblown by the media, asked: “What’s the big deal about sex?” Others reveled in the newfound attention.

On a recent afternoon, two young men cruised near campus in a snappy new red car, hawking their latest entrepreneurial venture--$6.50 T-shirts emblazoned with the words, “Member of Lakewood High Posse,” along with a stick-figure tally, apparently signifying the point system with which the Spurs kept score of their sexual conquests.

Boys on the sidewalk saw the shirts and laughed. Girls smirked, rolled their eyes or appeared nonplussed.

“It’s stupid,” said a 15-year-old freshman, shaking her head. “There’s two kinds of girls at Lakewood,” she went on. “There are those who respect themselves and those who don’t. . . . If you’re going to get involved with one of them, you must not think much of yourself. You’re just a point to them. You’re nothing special.”

Students talked of a sexual double standard at the school.

“When guys have sex even numerous times no one walks up to them and says: ‘You’re such a slut,’ ” said an 18-year-old senior.

Peer pressure heightened the conflict between factions of boys and girls at the 3,700-student school. The Spurs were, for the most part, big men on campus, popular and well known athletes. To what extent girls chased them for sex or were forced to have sex is a matter of rancorous debate.

Anger spread like a fever not only among students, but also among faculty and parents. Angry teachers demanded to know why the school should be vilified for teen-age behavior that took place off campus. Angry parents blasted the Spurs and accused school administrators of failing to intervene. Angry Spurs defended themselves as nonviolent youths wrongly maligned for doing what untold thousands of teen-agers do--have sex.

That the district attorney’s office declined to file charges against eight of the nine suspects, freeing them to return to their jobs and classrooms, did little to defuse the conflict. Many parents were left struggling to put their community back in order while feeling that legal authorities had failed to protect their children.

The collective outrage seemed to grow last week as new details surfaced concerning other alleged crimes of the Spurs. Two founding members--Dana Belman, 20, and Christopher Russo, 19--entered not guilty pleas and await court hearings this month on 19 felony counts involving alleged residential burglaries and use of stolen credit cards. Since July, sheriff’s deputies in Lakewood have handled 31 felony incidents involving at least 15 members of the gang, not counting the alleged sex crimes, according to Deputy Ken Rueben.

As the disclosures began to emerge, alleged victims and families broke their silence at an emotional community meeting and in interviews, charging that girls are being intimidated--and, in the case of one 16-year-old, threatened with death--to discourage their testimony against the Spurs.

“(People) need to know this isn’t just a rape thing,” one parent said.

One 17-year-old girl said that she was raped last spring by a member of the Spurs and that her father died because of the stress of dealing with the incident. The girl angrily argued that the sexual history of the victims is irrelevant when they are coerced to have sex.

“It’s your body,” she said. “It’s an issue of control. Why is it that ‘boys will be boys’ and girls are sluts or tramps if they choose to have sex? The message is that because they slept with someone else, they don’t deserve any rights, that they couldn’t possibly be raped.”

One parent said her 15-year-old daughter has been harassed and threatened by Spur Posse members ever since she made allegations that a boy--believed to be a Spur--tried to rape her last summer. Another parent said her daughter also has been threatened. The girl has had multiple hip surgeries and could be permanently paralyzed if she is pushed or hit, the mother said.

“I fear for her safety,” she said. “We’re talking about a 15-year-old girl. She’s been through enough hell. She doesn’t deserve this.”

Both girls say they have reported the threats to school officials for months and walk the campus hallways in constant fear. After a talk last week with administrators, one mother exploded in anger because Lakewood High Principal Mike Escalante suggested that her daughter transfer to another school.

“Our daughters have to go?” she said in an interview, holding back tears. “I don’t see why they can’t get the kids together and say this will not be tolerated. If handling it means getting rid of the victims, then they’re sure not handling it very well.”

That sentiment was echoed at a news conference by attorney Gloria Allred, who fired a warning shot at school officials by suggesting that they knew about at least one rape charge in December but took no action.

Escalante declined comment on Allred’s charge and responded to the two mothers’ claims by saying that all students fearing for their safety were being offered various options, including schedule changes or transfers. But no one was being asked to leave.

Altogether, he has dealt with 75 to 100 students who had varying degrees of concern, the principal added, noting that two assemblies were being planned to educate the students and a series of lunchtime forums about date rape and sexual harassment was being set up.

Despite the furor over their exploits, the boys on center stage refused to back down. To the contrary, they have aggressively sought to capitalize on their instant fame. Eight of the gang’s ranking members flew to New York last week to hit the clubs, gratis, while “doing the talk show thing,” as one member’s father put it.

A whirlwind of appearances reached its height--or nadir--when founder Belman and two others agreed to appear on ABC television’s “Home Show” in Hollywood. At the last minute, when the program was committed to featuring them, the three Spurs demanded $1,000 apiece and “hijacked” the show into coming up with the unprecedented appearance fees, an ABC spokeswoman said.

After the Friday morning taping, a smug Belman--who could not be reached for comment--reportedly climbed into a white limousine and said he was “going back to the city that I put on the map.”

The gang’s cavalier attitudes--and the equally unrepentant statements of their parents, who were quoted in newspapers and magazines coast to coast blaming the alleged victims--triggered an angry backlash throughout the city. One 68-year-old woman lamented: “We have gotten so busy pursuing the good things in life--nice homes, cars, designer clothes--(that) we have failed to teach our kids moral values.”

Lakewood Mayor Marc Titel, speaking from his City Council dais, denounced what he called the “feeding frenzy” of camera crews and reporters taking bites out of the city’s upstanding image. Then, more soberly, Titel said it was time to “look in the mirror.” It was time to ask: “What does this say about the kind of values we’re teaching our young people?

“Young girls should not be treated as conquests or notches or points or whatever,” said the father of seven, who has a son attending Lakewood High. “Young men should not feel it is socially acceptable to get all the sexual favors you can.”

But the Spurs seem to regard those views as anachronisms. During informal conversations at a popular Lakewood grill and at a schoolyard where they played basketball one Saturday, several Spurs talked candidly about their attitudes toward sex and violence. These days, the notion that sex is permissible is driven home every day in movies and in song lyrics, said Eric Richardson, 17, who was arrested during the March 18 raid at the high school.

“You watch TV . . . (and) sex is on everything,” he said. “Even the advertisements, the commercials, talk about sex. I don’t see nothing wrong with it. . . . I was just mad about going to jail for just having sex. All we did was have sex. That’s all we did.”

Asked about his attitude toward sleeping with many different girls, Richardson shrugged. “If you’ve got it, flaunt it. If a girl calls you up and says: ‘Come over, no one’s home,’ what do you expect . . . you’re going to go over there and talk?”

Chris Albert, a longtime Spur who graduated from Lakewood High a year ago, numbered his sexual conquests at 38 but said his values have changed dramatically in the past year. With a steady girlfriend now, he is no longer drawn to girls who will sleep with boys on the first date.

“In high school . . . if I knew a girl who was like that, I’d jump on her,” Albert said, “but now . . . if a girl is like that, it’s a real turnoff.”

Albert conceded that he “never thought about wearing a rubber” while in high school. He and other Spurs claimed to now use condoms regularly. Another, who asked not to be identified, conceded that some of his friends do not.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if some of my friends did come down with something,” the Spur said. “Maybe not AIDS, but something. I wouldn’t be surprised at all. There have been a few of my friends that have slept with some girls that have been real questionable.”

Jeff Howard, a Spur who graduated two years ago, addressed questions about violence by conceding that he and his friends have engaged in a number of fights, most often at parties. “I ain’t going to lie--I love a good fight,” he said, snacking on a salad and sipping a soft drink.

“That was part of our fun,” rejoined Albert.

But the clique has never used weapons and never provoked the incidents, Howard added. “It was not on our minds . . . (to) go beat the hell out of somebody. It was never like that. My interest was to (have sex).”

The Spurs maintain that they were never a gang. In Lakewood, however, where the freedom to walk without fear at night is largely taken for granted, even the specter of gang problems draws quick attention.

The city claims to be the first in the nation to implement day and night helicopter patrols. Vice Mayor Larry Van Nostran, who is serving his 19th year on the City Council, recalls proudly how he helped to beef up security at the huge Lakewood Center Mall, where the acreage is patrolled by a sheriff’s deputy in a Chevy Blazer. The vehicle is equipped with a periscoping, 360-degree camera with a telephoto lens.

“(The deputy) can sit there and watch clear across the parking lot and see if a guy’s trying to pick a lock,” Van Nostran said. A security team inside the mall is alerted at the first suspicion of trouble. “If we see a suspect who looks like a shoplifter, or a gang member . . . everybody’s alerted. The security will be assigned to them, escorting them in one (door) and out the other.

“We’ve tried to stay on top of everything.”

Indeed, sheriff’s deputies have kept close watch on the Spurs since last summer. The Spurs claim that such vigilance, coupled with a few fights last summer, made for a contentious relationship with the deputies. In two pipe-bomb incidents this year, Spurs were the intended targets, not the instigators, posse members pointed out. Deputies said they do not know who was responsible for the bombs.

Hints of serious trouble for the gang became apparent in July when Belman was arrested on suspicion of stealing 21 guns, valued at $5,000, from the master bedroom of a home he had visited during a party, according to authorities and court records.

Later, Belman and co-founder Russo were arrested at two Las Vegas casinos on suspicion of using stolen credit cards, and they were arrested again shortly before Christmas, allegedly for forging checks bearing the label of a defunct company known as California Trees.

Belman’s attorney, Tom Loversky, brushed off the evidence against his client as circumstantial, saying there is no clear tie between Belman and the party or the cashed checks.

“It’s my opinion these sheriff’s (deputies) have an ax to grind,” Loversky said.

As it became clear that the furor would continue for many weeks, if not longer, the citizenry of Lakewood has struggled for a sense of perspective, saying that illicit sex and juvenile delinquency have existed for millennia and that the town now disparaged as “Rapewood” still contains a predominance of fine, upstanding citizens, young and old.

Rich De Coudres, a teacher of psychology and American history at Lakewood High, asked another question: How could these TV cameras keep coming in, delivering a nationwide, perhaps worldwide, message that the school is a den of iniquity?

“It’s just not,” he said. “If we’re going to talk about morality, where’s the morality of the media? How ethical has the treatment been for an institution that is underfunded and doing great things?”

Still, many are left questioning their own, and each other’s, skills as parents, feeling that somehow, along the way, Lakewood forgot to pay attention to the children.

“I am totally devastated that young people can be so cruel. They’re insensitive because they’re not taught,” said the guardian of a 15-year-old girl.

A man who was there when Lakewood began so idyllically 40 years ago said, “It’s about time the parents woke up and said, ‘Wait a minute, I have a responsibility to the community.’ ”

But the longtime Rotary Club member did not want to disclose his name. “I don’t care to have any of these weirdos throwing stuff on my lawn or through the window--or something else.”

A Look at Lakewood

The first master-planned suburb in the county, Lakewood is a predominantly white, middle-class community. Built during the 1950s, the city features a major regional shopping mall and is home to many workers at the nearby McDonnell Douglas Corp. aircraft plant.

PEOPLE

Population:

1970: 82,973

1990: 73,557 Racial/ethnic breakdown:

Anglo: 53,296

Latino: 10,526

Asian-American: 6,529

African-American: 2,606

Other: 600 Housing:

Homeowners: 73%

Renters: 27% Registered voters in 1992:

Democrats: 21,057