Fear Prompted Her Visits to Holden, Accuser Testifies

During her long fifth day on the witness stand Tuesday, a woman suing Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden for sexual harassment gave feisty answers to pointed questions, bantered with defense lawyers and the judge, and once broke down in tears.

Former receptionist Marlee M. Beyda, 31, offered her most succinct summary of why she continued working at Holden’s district field office and kept returning to his Marina del Rey apartment after hours despite his alleged attempts to force her into sexual activities.

“Councilman Holden had the power to hire and fire, to give you work or take work away,” Beyda, 31, testified. “It seemed to me that when he demanded of me, there was little choice but to succumb to demands.”

That answer was stricken from the record as not responsive to queries by Holden’s attorney, Skip Miller, about Beyda’s fear of her former boss, but she went on to describe her various strategies to defuse Holden’s sexual advances.

Holden has denied any sexual contact with Beyda.

“I tried to talk to him. I tried to be kind. I tried to tell him where I stood in terms of a relationship,” Beyda said. “I tried to communicate with him that I didn’t want to be touched. . . . By December, I felt that I had tried everything, so many different things, and they just weren’t working. I had nothing left.”

But two months later, Beyda has testified, she returned to the apartment where she claims Holden tried to force her to perform oral sex and have intercourse. On Tuesday, Beyda explained that she felt less afraid in February, partly because she had moved out of the rent-free house-sitting arrangement that Holden had helped her find.

Wiping tears from her eyes, she said: “I felt that I would no longer have to be subject to Councilman Holden’s remarks. . . . I wouldn’t have to listen to Councilman Holden saying, ‘Look what I’ve done for you.’ I thought that maybe he wouldn’t have the power over me that he seemed to have.”

As Miller peppered her with specific questions, Beyda offered long, rambling answers. At one point, she snapped, “I’m not done,” when he offered her another question before she had finished speaking.

Near the moment that she cried on the stand, Beyda accused her opponent’s counsel of wearing a smirk and said: “Mr. Miller, I just don’t think it’s funny.”

Beyda’s lawyers and Superior Court Judge Raymond D. Mireles--who is hearing the case without a jury--asked Miller several times to back away from the witness stand, where he had placed an easel charting Beyda’s alleged visits to Holden’s apartment.

Mireles warned Beyda several times not to “parry” with the lawyers and to listen carefully to the questions and answer them rather than try to argue the case. But late in the afternoon, when Beyda explained why she did not understand a question, the judge said “sustained,” though no lawyer had objected.