2nd Woman Says Holden Harassed Her : City Hall: Former aide accuses councilman of ‘verbal and physical sexual attacks.’ He denies charges.

A former aide to Councilman Nate Holden accused him Tuesday of sexual harassment and asked a state agency to order him to pay her $500,000 in damages. Connie Collins, 30, is the second former Holden staffer to accuse the councilman of harassment.

In a written statement to the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment, Collins said that the two-term councilman helped create a “sexually charged” atmosphere in his City Hall office. Collins said she was subjected to demeaning remarks, including requests for sexual favors, from Holden and some of his male staffers.

In her statement, Collins said she “was humiliated, embarrassed and offended by (Holden’s) rampant and hostile verbal and physical sexual attacks on me.”

Collins’ statement is a required first step in filing a formal sexual harassment complaint with the state. Fair Housing and Employment officials said they had received the statement but had not yet reviewed it.

Holden, through his lawyer, Barbara Lindemann, denied the accusations.

“I find these extraordinary charges,” Lindemann said. “I think it is sad that she would make these allegations.”

At a City Hall news conference Tuesday morning, Holden said he had retained Lindemann to defend him and declined to answer questions about sexual harassment allegations. Lindemann is considered an expert on sexual harassment and employment discrimination.

She said that while sexual harassment is a reality, such charges “can also become witch hunts.”

In a phone interview, she asserted that Collins had never complained to Holden about the alleged sexual harassment and had visited him often after she resigned last year as one of his legislative aides.

Collins said she had complained verbally to Holden, to co-workers and to others in City Hall during her six-month tenure as a Holden aide. She never filed a formal complaint, she said, because she feared she would lose her job and be blacklisted in political circles.

Collins said she quit the job in disgust because of the harassment, but she has since asked for and received favorable job references from Holden.

In her statement to the Department of Fair Housing and Employment, Collins said Holden openly displayed pinup calendars and Playboy magazines in the office and that he once got down “on all fours” and asked her: “What do you women want? I remember when women were happy just being secretaries.”

Two weeks ago, former Holden aide Carla Cavalier, 32, filed a statement with the same state agency. Officials said they are in the process of formally accepting that complaint, which also seeks $500,000 in damages.

In addition, Cavalier has filed a claim--a state-required precursor to a lawsuit--against Holden and the City of Los Angeles.

Holden has said Cavalier’s accusations are politically motivated, engineered by her lawyer, Melanie Lomax, at a time when Holden is considering running for mayor of Los Angeles. Both Lomax--who is also representing Collins--and Cavalier have denied that.

Collins said she may never have come forward had Holden not attacked Cavalier’s credibility.

“What he did to me, to Carla, to numerous other women was wrong,” said Collins, now a Los Angeles County advocate for the mentally ill. “This guy is a repeat offender and he needs to be stopped in his tracks.”