Rape Concerns Bring Out Parents : Crime: Students are escorted home in wake of two sexual assaults. Police have questioned eight suspects.

Alarmed because two girls were raped as they returned home from school last week, parents converged on Hillery T. Broadous Elementary School on Thursday to walk their children home, then attended a meeting with police and civic leaders.

Police and school officials tried to calm parents’ fears during a night meeting at the nearby Boys & Girls Club of San Fernando Valley. City Councilman Richard Alarcon told the crowd of about 70, some 40 adults and 30 children, that he is asking the council to authorize a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of the rapist.

“When a person violates young people like this person violated these young girls, everybody in the community is violated,” Alarcon said.

Police Capt. James T. McBride of the Foothill Division said eight suspects had been questioned and seven released. The eighth, who was being held on unrelated outstanding warrants, was still being questioned, he said.

“I think this is an important time to reflect on our children and how we take care of our children,” McBride said, urging the parents to guard their children and warn them not to talk to strangers.

Many parents needed no urging.

“This is really bad,” said Evelia Fregoso, as she walked home Thursday with her daughters Alma, 9, and Juanita, 7. “I’m even afraid to go with them, that he’ll attack me, too.”

It wasn’t the first time Fregoso picked up her children, but this time, she said, she was keeping a closer eye on them.

Few parking spaces remained within two blocks of the school on Filmore Street, and curbs of side streets likewise were full. But most parents in the working-class neighborhood came and left on foot.

Maria Limones left work early, even though she has a son, and he walks only one block. “I heard all about it, so that’s why I’m here,” she said. “I’m going to have to find someone and pay them to pick him up every day.”

Maria Cervantes tried to keep her daughter and two sons within the shadow of her umbrella as she walked along Filmore. “I always come here, every morning and every afternoon,” she said. “I live nearby, like three blocks. Thank God that no one has ever bothered me or them. I think parents are all upset about it. They need to get more police out here.”

A 16-year-old en route to Kennedy High School in Granada Hills was abducted as she walked along the 12600 block of Van Nuys Boulevard on Sept. 21, and an 11-year-old walking only five blocks away from the Broadous school was kidnaped the next day. Both were taken to the same vacant apartment and sexually assaulted, police say.

“I still see kids walking all alone on Van Nuys Boulevard,” said Debra Reed, who came for her 6-year-old daughter, Arbree Taylor. Reed or one of her two neighbors usually pick up the children of all three families, she said. On Thursday, all three mothers went to Broadous.

“The number of parents coming here has quadrupled,” Reed said. “And since this happened, I’m starting to see more police in the area.”