Nate Holden on Boyarsky’s ‘Spin’

* Bill Boyarsky apparently finds it easy to throw out damaging and derogatory comments about me with not a touch of regret or careful thought. In his Nov. 9 column, “The Spin,” Boyarsky repeatedly attacks me by referring to me as “bullying,” as a person who treats female council members “with old-boy condescension,” and as a person with “unrelenting ambition.” Boyarsky’s “spin” is character assassination done in a cold and calculating manner.

Boyarsky hits me again in his column on Nov. 29, saying I “brought the mess down” on myself, and concluding that proposed legislation on setting up a system to deal with sexual harassment charges against elected officials and general managers “would mean at least one happy result from the messy Holden affair.” Boyarsky apparently wants me to be guilty and demands that I be guilty. I was found innocent by a judge in a court of law. This judge was determined to be totally acceptable to Marlee Beyda and her attorneys to make the decision in the case, prior to the trial. I was completely exonerated of sexual harassment and so were all four of the other defendants, including one woman.

Beyda visited my apartment four times. There was never anything whatsoever sexual in the nature of those visits. Regardless, Boyarsky believes it was wrong for her to have ever been at my apartment. Over many years, I’ve often visited with male and female members of my staff over lunch, dinner, at their apartments or at mine. It was always done with the best of intentions and with mutual consent and respect and always of a friendship nature. I can look myself in the mirror and stand proudly before my friends and family, knowing I have done nothing wrong and now it has also been proven in a court of law.

NATE HOLDEN

Councilman, Tenth District

* What Holden does in the privacy of his home is his business, and his responsibility. That he requests and receives compensation from the city for the cost of litigation relating to his private affairs is unconscionable. I and other citizens resent very much having to pay the $1-million cost of defending his behavior.

ROY SEIDLER

Los Angeles