Holden Accuser Files for New Harassment Trial

A woman who lost her sexual harassment lawsuit against Los Angeles City Councilman Nate Holden last fall filed legal papers Tuesday demanding a new trial, after she found out that Holden and his employees were entertained by scantily clad women during a 1991 city trip to South Korea.

Attorneys for Marlee M. Beyda--the former receptionist who said Holden tried to force her into sex acts during a series of after-hours visits to his Marina del Rey condo--claim in their motion that Holden lied on the stand about photographs from the South Korea trip, and that his public comments about the trip contradict his position during the trial about when he is on duty and when he is not.

“Councilman Holden purposely misled this court by offering testimony which he knew to be false. If Councilman Holden was false in one area of his testimony, it can be inferred that he testified falsely in other areas,” the motion states.

“These photographs and Councilman Holden’s attendant comments in the press make it clear that Councilman Holden is performing his official functions, even while at a strip bar in a foreign country.

Accordingly, it can hardly be said that he is not acting in his official capacity when he invites his receptionist over to his condominium under the pretext of a business meeting.”

Holden insisted Tuesday that the photos are irrelevant to the case.

“That’s crazy. There’s nothing in the Korean pictures that was relevant to her false allegations,” Holden said. “They don’t know when to say quit.”

The Times reported in December that Holden and several aides were entertained by strippers at a karaoke bar in Pusan, South Korea, during an official city business trip paid for by Korean government organizations.

Several television stations later broadcast the photographs--including one of a woman wearing nothing but panties singing into a microphone, and others of half-dressed women entangled on tabletops--which had been taken from Holden’s condo by a painter and later returned.

The painter is being prosecuted for theft, and the pictures landed in the public record as part of a search warrant in that case.

Beyda’s lawyers tried to subpoena the photographs during the trial, but the judge quashed the attempt.

When asked on the stand about his discussions about photos with a sheriff’s deputy at the time of Beyda’s employment, Holden said it concerned photos of a trip to Jamaica.

Another former Holden employee testified at the Beyda trial that the councilman and his top staffers often boasted in the office about their escapades with women overseas.