Holden Barred Office Dating, Staffers Testify

Several employees of Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden testified Thursday that their office had a “no fraternization” policy prohibiting co-workers from dating, though Holden himself has acknowledged inviting the receptionist who is suing him for sexual harassment to his Marina del Rey apartment after hours.

The 66-year-old lawmaker’s former chief of staff, current senior field deputy and longtime secretary all agreed that office romance is forbidden.

“The councilman always told me not to date people that I work with. He said it doesn’t look right,” testified Deron Williams, the senior field deputy who has worked for Holden since 1988. Asked whether male and female co-workers are allowed to go to dinner alone together after work, Williams said, “No.”

Herb Wesson, a former chief of staff for Holden who now works for County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite-Burke, agreed that there was “a recommendation that staff not fraternize because it could prove to be problematic.”

Holden has testified that he once cooked a fish-and-potatoes dinner for then-receptionist Marlee M. Beyda, the plaintiff in the harassment suit, and that Beyda visited his apartment several other times. Beyda, 31, has stated under oath that she was at the apartment with Holden at least seven times and that he sexually assaulted her there.

“How about that? Councilman Holden was in violation of his own policy,” Beyda’s lawyer, Dan Stormer, said outside of court.

Holden, however, said during a court break that his evening visits with Beyda were not prohibited by the policy.

“No romantic dating, that’s what I really mean. You could go to dinner, you could go to lunch,” he said. “If it’s in your mind that it’s a romantic setting, that’s wrong. That can bring a lot of chaos in the office.

“Personally, I didn’t see anything wrong with it,” Holden said of his invitations to Beyda. “But if I had it to do over today, I probably wouldn’t have.”

In other testimony Thursday, Wesson said that he recommended against hiring Beyda, who failed two typing tests, but that Holden--who met her while she was a waitress at a hotel banquet--overruled his chief of staff.

“I can’t think of any job that takes a stronger commitment to the people of the city than working for an elected official,” Wesson said. “Her [Beyda’s] desires lay in the area of art, and I just didn’t see how there was a nexus between what she wanted to do and what we had available.”

Once she started work, as a receptionist in the district field office, Beyda was “boisterous,” happy and opinionated, Williams testified.

“She would say anything that was on her mind,” he said. “If you talked to her the wrong way, she would tell you how she felt.”

Williams, who sat near Beyda’s workstation and was among her closest friends in the office, said Beyda never complained to him about harassment from Holden or other male staffers named in the lawsuit. She did, however, confide troubling details of her childhood, including tales of an alcoholic father and a sexually abusive uncle, he testified.

“She said she came home one day from school and everything in the household was sold,” he recalled. “She couldn’t even go in and retrieve her teddy bear.”

Asked whether he thinks Beyda’s allegations are false, Williams--who still works for Holden--said he believes she is just out for money.

Financial matters were raised for the first time at the close of the court session Thursday, with an economist testifying that Beyda has already lost $54,967 in wages since she left Holden’s office, and that if she never gets another full-time job, her total future loss would be $341,118.

Jubin Merati, a doctoral candidate at Cal State Fullerton, said Beyda has earned only $3,797 a year since her resignation from the city, compared to her receptionist’s salary of $19,843.

The plaintiff’s legal team spent about $3,120 to hire Merati as an expert witness in the case.

As the non-jury trial ended its fourth week Thursday, Beyda also received a nod of support from outside the courtroom, with a group called Women Against Sexual Harassment sending her flowers.

“We believe you,” the card said.