Police yesterday continued to investigate the case of a 19-year-old University of Hawai'i-Manoa student who reported being sexually assaulted by a man who advertised on a campus bulletin board for art models.

The university e-mailed a crime alert Friday to all students, faculty and staff, warning them to use caution when responding to bulletin board ads, UH spokeswoman Carolyn Tanaka said.

University officials said the 19-year-old woman answered an ad and met with the 40-year-old suspect at a restaurant on Oct. 13. She agreed to go to his Kalakaua Avenue home, where she was allegedly assaulted.

The suspect was arrested Wednesday for investigation of two counts of second-degree sexual assault and was released without charges, according to police.

The man was enrolled at the university in a noncredit class, said Tanaka. He was arrested on suspicion of two counts of second-degree sex assault.

Tanaka said the man had a previous run-in with campus security after he was found tearing up material on a campus bulletin board.

According to the Associated Students of the University of Hawai'i, there have been at least 17 sexual assaults involving UH-Manoa students in the past three years.

Last year there were nine reported rapes in the four police beats in Patrol District 7 that surround the university, according to police statistics. The 31 reported rapes in all of District 7 were the most in the eight police patrol districts on O'ahu in 2004, up from 23 in 2003.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.