Reactions Include Anger, Astonishment

Response: Some of the accused deny allegations, others say they didn’t think actions were harassment.

Sexual harassment has become the talk of City Hall these days, with some of the choicest comments coming from the accused.

“We’ve had people who have said, ‘Yeah, I did that,’ because they didn’t think it was sexual harassment,” said Jim Nishimuro, who handles sexual harassment complaints submitted to the city’s personnel department.

“You get every different kind of reaction. There’s anger, fear. Some of them see their career in jeopardy, their livelihood gone. Some are astonished.”

A sampling:

* A Department of Water and Power supervisor said he had touched some female co-workers but not in a sexual manner. “He describes himself as a touchy-feely person, and as having an interest in other people,” a report on the incident said, “but that he has never ‘come on’ to anyone and has never been sexual or lewd.”

* Councilman Nate Holden denied that he had ever engaged in any sexual activity with former aide Marlee Beyda, as she alleged, although he did grant that on two occasions she gave him massages in his condominium. He called the allegations “blackmail,” an attempt by Beyda to win money from him. Beyda’s attorney filed a defamation suit against Holden in response to that charge.

* City Clerk Elias Martinez, who faces a hearing this week before the City Council on Mayor Tom Bradley’s recommendation to fire him, challenged the possibility that some of the allegations lodged against him could be true. Besides calling the allegations “fabrications,” he said his 5-foot-4 height would have made it impossible for him to play footsie with his accuser while they ate lunch. “The seating arrangements at the luncheon were such that I--not a particularly tall person--could not possibly have reached the complainant with my foot,” Martinez wrote.