Holden Battles Sex Charges : Courts: Sexual harassment trial for councilman begins this week. A former aide testifies in pretrial proceedings that he used to grab her, but he denies wrongdoing.

In the austere chambers of the Los Angeles City Council, the large leather chair whose metal plate bears the name “Nate Holden” sat empty all last week, and will probably remain unfilled for days to come.

Instead of debating environmental and public safety issues with his colleagues, Holden has been across the Civic Center plaza in the county courthouse, fighting allegations that he groped and grabbed a former receptionist and tried to force her into a romantic relationship.

“Of course I’d rather be in council,” said the 66-year-old lawmaker, who represents a swath of Southwest Los Angeles that includes Koreatown and the Crenshaw district. “But I’m required to be here and sit through this.”

“This” is a sexual harassment and discrimination lawsuit filed more than two years ago by Marlee M. Beyda, one of three former employees to accuse Holden of inappropriate touching, offensive comments and the creation of a hostile and discriminatory work environment. Beyda’s case against the city, the councilman and several top staffers is the first to land in a courtroom, reviving ugly allegations that plagued Holden’s 1993 mayoral bid and 1995 council reelection campaign.

Holden has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, at first claiming that the lawsuits were part of a “broad political conspiracy” engineered against him by former Mayor Tom Bradley, and later saying Beyda had a crush on him and that he rebuffed her advances.

In a week of legal wrangling before the trial begins Monday, Beyda and Connie Collins--a former scheduling and planning deputy who says Holden harassed her but who is not a party to the lawsuit--offered new details, under oath, about what allegedly happened inside Holden’s city offices. A third women, Carla Cavalier, is scheduled to testify this week, before her case against Holden goes to trial in Orange County in January.

“He would approach me in the office in what I call a sexual way, pressing up against me, rubbing me, cornering me in the kitchen,” testified Collins, 33, who worked for Holden for six months and now attends Howard University Law School. “He touched me on my thigh for a prolonged period of time, grabbed me around my waist,” said Collins, the only witness so far to testify on the substance of the allegations because she had to return to Washington, and could not testify during the trial. Once, Collins recalled on the witness stand, she walked into a meeting and Holden asked her to stop and turn around. “I thought there was a bug on me or something,” she testified. “He [Holden] said to the other men, ‘Medically speaking, isn’t she anatomically correct?’ ”

Collins’ claim against Holden with the Department of Fair Employment and Housing was dismissed. Officials with the agency would not say why they did not sustain her complaint. Before the decision, the agency said the complaint was problematic because it might have been filed after the expiration of a one-year statute of limitations. But after the decision, officials would not say if the time limit was a factor in their decision.

During her testimony last week, Collins said that when she visited the councilman’s field office--where Beyda worked from April, 1991, until summer, 1992--she was routinely greeted with lewd comments and gestures in a “singles bar atmosphere.”

“They’d leer at you and rush up to you, talk about how you were dressed, how your legs looked, try to plant kisses on you,” Collins testified. She said Holden would “join in” when staffers made sexual comments, and that when she complained to the councilman about being called “sugar,” “darlin’ ” and “hammer”--a term denoting a good-looking woman--Holden responded by saying, “‘OK, darlin’.’ ”

Holden brushed off Collins’ testimony, whispering “she hates me” to a reporter during a court break. His attorney, Skip Miller, repeatedly objected to the testimony, accusing Collins of “mudslinging.”

“She’s obviously got an agenda, this is not fair,” Miller told Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Raymond D. Mireles, who will decide the merits of the claim because both sides waived the right to a jury trial. “It’s a witness with an ax to grind.”

Other witnesses testified only on the issue of what constitutes a workplace, as the judge struggles to determine whether Beyda’s repeated visits to Holden’s Marina del Rey apartment made the apartment part of the work environment.

Beyda, a 30-year-old former waitress who met Holden while she was working at a Valentine’s Day party at a hotel, says that she was “on call 24 hours a day” and that Holden “ordered” her to his apartment “more than 50 times,” though she only went there about half a dozen times. Holden keeps a home and officially resides in his Los Angeles district, but also owns a Marina del Rey high-rise condo.

Before her first visit to the marina, Beyda wrote Holden a memo thanking him for giving her a job and saying, ‘Let me know if there is anything I can do for you.’ Later, she alleges, Holden offered to advance her career if she succumbed to a sexual rendezvous. “Mr. Holden said that if I put out, I could go to other and more important [community] events,” Beyda said, adding that she did not “put out” but did “let Mr. Holden touch” her. “I was afraid of Mr. Holden. I was afraid I would lose my job. . . . I was concerned for my physical well-being, my emotional well-being, my professional. . . .”

Although Beyda testified that she defined her work environment as anywhere she went with the councilman, other staffers, including several who held the same job as Beyda, testified that receptionists worked regular 9-to-5 hours. Unlike Beyda, who said Holden called her at home after 9 p.m. more than 20 times, the other aides said they were rarely contacted at home or asked to visit the marina apartment. Holden, a former state senator who was elected to the City Council in 1987, testified that he did not conduct business at the apartment, where he moved at least part-time in 1991 after receiving death threats at his home. He acknowledged that he discussed the office as well as personal matters with Beyda when she visited. “It was a social visit. That’s my definition, social,” he said. “She would talk about her parents, family life. Boyfriends, on occasion. Views on people in the office, work habits.” Holden said Beyda “didn’t come for a date,” nor for sex, romantic purposes or physical assaults, but that she also was not there for business meetings. “Just social in nature, friendly, friendship-type visits,” he testified.

Last week, Mireles ruled that Bradley and other political figures, including several current and former council members, would not be allowed to testify during the trial.

“It’s not going to be a hot political case of, ‘Is there sexism at City Hall?’ It’s just going to be, ‘Was there a hostile work environment for this particular plaintiff.’ ” Miller said.

“Nate was mildly amused with this woman, he thought she had a crush on him. Nate doesn’t have affairs with people who work for him, just plain doesn’t do that,” Holden’s lawyer added. “The real question is, ‘Why is Nate Holden--[a] very successful, powerful politician, in the twilight of his career--fighting this case?’ He’s fighting because he’s not going to knuckle under, because it’s the right thing to do. He did nothing wrong.”