Officer Tells Court She Was Raped by Superior : Courts: Lawsuit against commander and the city alleges violation of 12-year veteran’s civil rights. The defendant says sex was consensual.

A police officer broke down on the witness stand Tuesday as she testified that she had been raped by a commander in the Los Angeles Police Department.

The 12-year veteran is suing the commander and the city for alleged violation of her civil rights. She said the high-ranking officer lured her into his apartment March 31, 1992, under the pretext of giving her advice, and then raped her.

“It’s like living a horrible nightmare,” the tearful officer said. “It’s like something that doesn’t go away.”

Since the incident, she said, she has been hospitalized four times for depression--accumulating medical bills of more than $90,000. She has been on disability since reporting the incident.

After opening arguments in federal court, the commander took the witness stand first and briefly told the jury that he had sexual intercourse with the officer, but said it was consensual. In an internal Police Department hearing, the commander was cleared of any wrongdoing and remains on duty.

The Times is not publishing the names of the officer or the commander she has accused. It is the newspaper’s policy generally not to identify alleged victims of sexual assault.

The woman testified that the commander invited her to his apartment after she had called his supervisor on several occasions to talk about marital and career problems. She said she was invited to the commander’s Westchester apartment to get the name of a therapist he had recommended, but she said she quickly found that he had other things in mind.

“I’m angry,” she said. “I’m very disappointed that someone in a position of such high trust and power in the Los Angeles Police Department could have done that to me.”

She said the commander asked her to sit on the couch, then took her hand in his and told her she was pretty. She said she removed her hand.

He invited her to his bedroom to look out of the window. But once inside the bedroom, she said, he blocked the doorway and took off his shirt. When she tried to move around him, she said, he grabbed her arms and pushed her onto the bed.

“I kept telling him that this was not what I wanted,” she said. “He kept saying that he was an old man and that it wouldn’t take long.”

The officer, struggling to maintain composure, went on to describe the alleged rape in detail.

She said she tried to struggle with the commander but found she could not get out from under him.

“I was trying to move him off me but he was dead weight,” she said.

After the rape, she said, she ran from the room, grabbed her purse and left the apartment. She drove to the beach, where she broke down in tears, she said.

“I felt like a fool,” she said. “I felt like it was my fault.”

She said she did not immediately report the rape, and she threw away the clothes she was wearing. A week after the incident, she said, she told the commander’s supervisor, but no action was taken.

She said the supervisor told her that these things happen between “men and women.”

“I knew then that nothing was going to happen,” she said.

The commander’s lawyer, Barry Levin, asked the officer why she did not follow police procedures when handling evidence or reporting a crime.

“In all my training as a police officer,” she said, “nobody trains you for what to do when you are the victim. I’ve never been a victim. I never expected a commander of the LAPD would do this to me.”

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday authorized an additional $40,000 for Levin to represent the commander. The appropriation brings the amount the city has agreed to pay Levin in the case to $90,000.

Levin was selected last year when the city attorney’s office concluded that it could not represent the commander because his alleged actions were outside the scope of his employment.

The council agreed to increase the authorization for Levin after he noted that the work involved in the case would grow because its scope had been expanded to include allegations the LAPD has a history of discrimination against women.

Last week, The Times--citing court records, internal police documents and interviews with police officers and others--reported that sexual harassment has until recently received little attention from department management. Among other things, The Times reported that in the past five years there have been at least eight cases of female LAPD employees alleging sexual assaults by co-workers. The Times also reported that the LAPD only began last year to compile records of sexual harassment cases, logging 43 complaints, five of them for alleged assaults.

The council also agreed Tuesday to audit every city department to assess the scope of the problem in municipal government.

The audits were requested by Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg, who heads the council’s Personnel Committee. In recent days, Goldberg has said her office’s review of sexual harassment claims just within the LAPD has persuaded her that the city could face a significant amount of litigation.

In the last several years, an estimated $400,000 has been paid out to settle sexual harassment cases.

“The purpose of this motion is for us to begin to get some assessment of the outstanding pending cases that might be actionable against the city,” Goldberg told colleagues.

The audits, she said, would not only help city officials determine “what kinds of issues and problems exist” but enable attorneys and personnel staff to develop a policy that might reduce the number of sexual harassment claims in the future.

Because the information may include specific personnel, Goldberg said, some reports will remain confidential and will be shared only with lawmakers behind closed doors. But an overall account of cases will be open to the public, she said, and could help the city adopt policies to limit litigation and provide a workplace “free of harassment and discrimination.”