Reports of Molester Alarm Valley Parents : Investigation: Schools besieged by calls. Police are criticized for not making information available earlier. The hunt for a suspect widens.

Parents besieged elementary schools throughout the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday, alarmed by reports that a serial molester has assaulted at least 22 children since February near schools from Canoga Park to North Hollywood, and dismayed that they had not been informed sooner.

“It’s becoming almost a frenzy at this point,” said Sheryl Walters, principal of Sunny Brae Avenue Elementary School in Canoga Park. “Everybody is calling. People are saying, ‘Did you hear? Did you read?’ They’re worried and many cannot walk their children to school or pick them up because they’re working.”

Many of the parents--and some school officials--criticized the police, saying they were left in the dark about the menace of the wide-ranging assailant.

Although Los Angeles Police Department investigators developed a composite sketch of the suspect in August and had concluded at least by early last week that a single man was responsible for at least 22 attacks going back 10 months, they did not notify Los Angeles Unified School District officials until last Thursday and did not release the information to the news media until Monday.

“When there are crimes around the schools, the schools should be notified and then take appropriate action in forming a partnership with parents to ensure safety,” said Harriet Sculley, president of the 31st District Parent Teacher Student Assn., which covers the Valley.

“I think if any child was harmed because that didn’t happen, I think that’s tragic. If something could have been prevented by that information being given to parents, that is devastating.”

Police said schools were notified as soon as the pattern of assaults was clearly established.

The assailant has accosted mostly children between ages 7 and 17 as they walked to school, distracting them with a question and then grabbing the victim’s crotch area, police said. Most victims have been female. Police believe the suspect is responsible for one rape.

Authorities said Tuesday that extra police officers and detectives have been deployed throughout Devonshire Division, especially in an area between Willis and DeSoto avenues, south of Devonshire Street and north of Roscoe Boulevard. Officers in other divisions have stepped up their activity as well.

Police have repeatedly reinterviewed the victims as they seek to develop more details. Police say they have not determined if the suspect has carried a weapon.

The suspect is described as a black man between 5-feet-10 and 6 feet, 1 inch tall and weighing 180 to 200 pounds, 35 to 45 years old, with short, graying black hair. Police say he may have been driving a small black-and-gray or maroon pickup truck. A police composite sketch of the suspect shows a beard and mustache.

Cmdr. John Moran, acting commanding officer of Valley police divisions, said detectives from three divisions began meeting after the most serious attack, the Nov. 3 rape of a 9-year-old Fullbright Avenue Elementary School student who was dragged into an apartment building laundry room on her way to school.

“It wasn’t until last week that this pattern was put together with a common suspect that went back to last February,” Moran said. “As soon as we knew what was up, we notified (the Los Angeles school district).

“It wasn’t soon enough--it’s never soon enough,” Moran conceded. “We didn’t know how vast a problem it was. The problem just didn’t come together, because three detective divisions were working on it.”

Valley detectives also insisted that it is best to try to trap a molester before there is widespread publicity, ahead of the kind of reaction evident on Tuesday with hundreds of parents calling schools and showing up to escort their children home.

Most parents were more concerned about protecting their own children than assisting the police investigation.

“I think they should have said a little more,” said Stella Eckstein, picking up her 8-year-old daughter at Fullbright school. “We have to protect our children. You feel so insecure.”

“It makes me very angry because we are not getting enough information,” said Terry Ortiz, rocking her 3-week-old son and scanning the Fullbright schoolyard for her 7-year-old daughter at the close of school Tuesday.

Until she heard about one incident in a letter from school officials, Ortiz allowed her daughter to walk to school with older classmates. Now she drives Kelly, a third-grader, to school herself.

It was not clear Tuesday whether police told individual school principals about any of the prior attacks, but the Nov. 3 rape came to the attention of Fullbright Principal James Grover from a parent.

“I had not heard of other incidents,” Grover said. “That was one of the things that has bothered our parents here at school. We did not know about these 22 incidents.”

When Grover called West Valley police detectives to discuss the rape, which he said was reported to police by the girl’s mother, officers did not mention any other similar crimes, he said.

On Nov. 4, Grover sent a letter alerting Fullbright parents to the assault and urging them to take extra precautions. The letter included the police description of the suspect.

Principals of all 131 Valley elementary schools were alerted by school district officials late last week after after receiving word of the attacks from police. Yet, even by Tuesday, the news had not reached all school parents.

Graciela Sandoval, parked outside Christopher Columbus Middle School in Canoga Park waiting for her two daughters and their two friends, shook her head and said she knew nothing about the incidents. She had yet to read the papers or hear the news, she said.

A 12-year-old Columbus student was apparently the target of the first assault on Feb. 22 when she was grabbed as she walked to school.

A girl identifying herself as that victim discussed the incident Tuesday, recalling that as she was walking to school, a man walked ahead of her and seemed to be looking for something. As she walked by, she said, he asked her where the school was located.

“I had my history book in front of me,” the girl said, demonstrating how she clasped her book with her arms outstretched in front of her. “He just reached under (the book) and grabbed me. I didn’t know how to react. . . . I was shaking.

“I had just picked some flowers and I remember I ripped them up when I was walking.”

The girl, who was not injured, said that a letter distributed at school Tuesday was the first notice she has had that other students had also been attacked.

Until last month, the attacks were infrequent, and spread out over the Valley, according to Moran and other authorities.

There have been as many as 11 assaults in the West Valley Division--about one every other month until last month, when there were three. Another three have been reported this month, including the rape, said Detective Duane Burris, head of the sexual assaults unit.

“He usually just walks up and grabs them,” Burris said. “That’s how he gets his kicks.”

Seven attacks have been reported in the Devonshire Division, most of them within the last four to five months. The most recent occurred last Thursday near the corner of DeSoto Avenue and Devonshire Street, Lt. Kyle Jackson said.

In the Van Nuys Division, there have been five assaults since April 2, including two on July 19. One occurred at 7:10 a.m. on Bassett Street and another minutes later on Hazeltine Avenue. The last reported incident in Van Nuys Division was on Oct. 15.

The investigation was widened Tuesday to include the North Hollywood Division. Investigators there confirmed that they also are examining several assaults to see if the assailant is the same man authorities in the other three divisions are looking for.

On the morning of Aug. 24, a man fitting the suspect’s description walked up to two girls, aged 9 and 12, near the corner of Farmdale Avenue and Valerio Streets as they walked to school. “He walked up to one girl, the 12-year-old, grabbed her crotch, and took off running,” said Detective Gary Barthelmess of the sexual assault unit. He said two other cases may be linked.

The decision not to alert school officials of the attacks, even before the pattern emerged, highlights widely differing perspectives on how best to protect children.

Authorities had hoped to keep their investigations under wraps so they wouldn’t scare the assailant away, said Burris and other police officials. “And now he knows,” Burris said.

That vigorous defense was buttressed by a child molestation expert who trains other police officers through courses offered by the U.S. Justice Department and International Chiefs of Police Assn.

Sgt. Bonnie Wilbanks of the Ft. Lauderdale Sheriff’s Department in Florida said it is often better to withhold the information.

“If I let them know and it leaks out and parents become concerned and hysterical, this will discourage the person I may be getting a good lead on, cause him to go underground or move into a new area,” Wilbanks said. “You don’t want that to happen. You want to catch that person so you have the minimal number of victims that you can.”

In her department, Wilbanks said, notification of school officials would require the consent of a department supervisor, possibly even the sheriff.

School officials, on the other hand, lean toward communicating such information to parents immediately. Sara Caughlin, superintendent of Valley region elementary schools, who made the decision to send letters to school principals immediately after receiving the police announcement last week, said it was the third time this year she has sent out such a warning.

“This year has been an unusual year in this regard,” Caughlin said.

The first warning concerned the abduction and rape of three youths on their way to school in Pacoima in September and October. Alarmed parents in the neighborhood organized escorts for their children until paroled sex offender Robert Lee Donaldson was later arrested and charged with the attacks.

The second warning was issued in September after a man was reported exposing himself to students at West Valley schools. A suspect has also been arrested in those incidents.

“Anything concerning the safety of a child, I wish they would notify a school principal,” Caughlin said. “Most of the time, though, we learn of these things through a parent.”

Police should have notified school officials of the earlier attacks and should have made the composite sketch available as well, Caughlin said.

“I’m not sure what I would have done with it,” she said. “We probably would have worked with the LAPD and our own school police on what to do with that information.”

Child Molestations Reported

These are the LAPD divisions in the San Fernando Valley reporting assaults by a man believed to be a serial child molester. Most victims were young and female, attacked while walking to school, police said. Police are withholding many of the details because of their ongoing investigations.

Children’s safety tips

1. Walk in groups to and from school.

2. Walk on the sidewalk away from the curb.

3. Do not approach cars.

4. Tell parents or the school about any suspicious incident.

5. Be alert and cautious.

6. Don’t talk to strangers.

* Report any suspicious people to the police and/or school. LAPD’s West Valley Division’s telephone is 989-8546.