Crime & Safety

Oxy Student Has Not Filed Report of Sexual Assault (Update)

Campus Safety director says it's not known whether the student was raped.

A female student of who was sexually assaulted by a man this past weekend has not filed a report with either the LAPD or with the college’s Department of Campus Safety—and at this point it is not known whether she was raped.

“The student chose not to file a report with the LAPD, as is her right,” Oxy’s Department of Campus Safety Director Holly Nieto said. However, the student “could come forward at any time and want to make an official report,” Nieto said, adding that “we don’t know what form of sexual assault” the student suffered.

The headline of our initial story early Thursday indicated that the student had been raped.

Find out what's happening in Eagle Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The student was assaulted between 11:45 p.m. last Friday and 12:15 a.m. on Saturday while she was walking in a residential area on Yosemite Drive near Eagle Rock High School, Field Sgt. Ed Mourthi of the Occidental College Department of Campus Safety told Eagle Rock Patch early Thursday over the phone, a few hours after the news was reported by a local television station on Wednesday night.

Initially, Mourthi did not disclose the victim’s gender, explaining that he was not at liberty to say whether the student was male or female. He subsequently called Eagle Rock Patch and said that the student was female.

Find out what's happening in Eagle Rockwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Later, an officer at the Northeast Community Police station told Eagle Rock Patch that he had heard “a student had been raped” but that only station detectives who investigate sex-related crimes would have details about the incident.

A detective reached Thursday morning said he would not be able access any information about the crime without an “internal incident number” from Occidental College or a unit number or the names of LAPD officers who might have been dispatched to investigate the crime.

The Occidental College Department of Campus Safety issued a campus-wide alert after being notified of the assault on Saturday morning.

“Because we are a post-secondary institution, we are required by federal law to let our community know about a situation that poses a risk to them,” Nieto said.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

To request removal of your name from an arrest report, submit these required items to arrestreports@patch.com.

More from Eagle Rock