A rare disciplinary hearing opened Monday featuring lurid allegations that a California appeals court judge sexually harassed more than two dozen women he knew professionally during the past 18 years.

Justice Jeffrey Johnson groped women, touched their bare arms or inappropriately hugged them, said Emma Bradford, an examiner with the Commission on Judicial Performance, in an opening statement at the California State Bar Court in downtown Los Angeles. That included a fellow justice on the Second District Court of Appeal, Victoria Chaney, who plans to testify that Johnson groped her breasts and patted her buttocks.

Johnson also used “shocking, explicit language,” such as suggesting that one former Dentons attorney stroke his penis and telling California Highway Patrol Officer Tatiana Sauquillo, assigned to drive him to work functions, that he wanted to “fuck her from behind,” she said.

“Evidence in this hearing will show, throughout his legal career, Justice Johnson has sexually harassed women at all levels,” she said. “The allegations in this case are shocking.”

Johnson has acknowledged some of his behavior was inappropriate but denied the most serious allegations. On Monday, Johnson’s attorney Paul Meyer, a solo practitioner in Costa Mesa, California, called the accusations part of a smear campaign.

“We believe there’s a deceptive pile-on of allegations in this case,” he said. “Some allegations are serious. Some allegations are less serious. Some, when looking at them carefully, are not a violation at all.”

He also noted that many of alleged statements—such as, “I like that necklace” or “you’re a favorite” — would not be considered sexual harassment more than 10 years ago but now are misconstrued in the #MeToo era.

Flanked by Meyer and another lawyer, Reg Vitek, a shareholder at San Diego’s Seltzer Caplan McMahon Vitek, Johnson looked down during much of the morning’s proceedings on Monday, the first day of one of the most anticipated judicial disciplinary hearings in recent history.

The hearing, expected to last a month, takes place before three special masters: Justice Judith Haller of the Court of Appeal for the Fourth District, Imperial County Superior Court Judge William Lehman and San Diego County Superior Court Judge Louis Hanoian.

Johnson, who has been an associate justice on the Second District Court of Appeal for a decade, faces 10 counts of misconduct, including sexual harassment, misconduct and drunken behavior unbecoming a judge.

If the special masters and, ultimately, the Commission on Judicial Performance, find the allegations credible, they could remove Johnson from office.

Johnson’s legal team also includes Thomas Warwick Jr. of San Diego’s Grimes & Warwick, and Willie Brown Jr., the former mayor of San Francisco.

Bradford, on Monday, explained that the women did not report these incidences because they feared for their careers, given Johnson’s position as a judge. But many of them told their friends or significant others about his conduct.

“While many of these women didn’t officially report Judge Johnson’s conduct for years, they did not stay silent,” she said.

She also described Johnson’s “significant and troubling” alcohol use, often using the court building late in the evenings as “his own playground.”

On Monday, the first witness, Roberta Burnette, a former partner at Dentons now at Burnette Law Firm in Los Angeles, testified that Johnson appeared drunk when she first met him at an event of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers. She was chatting with him, along with other participants, after dinner at the 2015 event at the rooftop of the Jonathan Club.

“As soon as other people walked way, he said to me, ‘you know, you’re very voluptuous,’ ” she told Mark Lizarraga, another examiner with the Commission on Judicial Performance. To change the subject, she said, she mentioned she played the viola for the Los Angeles Lawyers Philharmonic.

“And then he said, ‘You need to put your viola mouth on my big black dick,’ ” she testified. “I was so shocked that he said that. It was so wrong in many ways.”

When she explained that the viola was a string instrument, he suggested she use her “viola hand” in a sexual manner.

But Meyer, in his opening statement, painted a picture of a campaign spurred by a former research attorney who in 2018 got other women “rethinking the past.” Elwood Lui, the administrative presiding justice of the Second District Court of Appeal, bolstered that campaign, particularly after he sent an email in July 2018 summarizing Sauquillo’s conversations with him to 15,000 members of the California judiciary. Johnson has filed a $10 million lawsuit against him and the Second District Court of Appeal for emotional distress. Sauquillo also has sued Johnson and the Second District Court of Appeal, as well as her former employer, the California Highway Patrol, for sexual harassment.

Meyer questioned Sauquillo’s credibility, particularly since she used the same phrases in her deposition to describe comments from her former supervisor at the CHP. He also said Sauquillo’s previous attorney was Michael Avenatti, an attorney for Stephanie Clifford, an adult firm star who performed under the name Stormy Daniels, who sued President Donald Trump over payments tied to their alleged affair. Avenatti now faces dozens of criminal charges, such as tax fraud, extortion and stealing from clients, including Daniels.

Chaney, a “close personal friend” of Sauquillo’s, fueled the accusations with “repeated, vicious slander,” he said.

“Justice Chaney has a history of exaggerated, salacious gossip about Judge Johnson.”

As to the allegations of intoxication, he said that Johnson, a diabetic, might appear drunk when he has low blood sugar. He emphasized that none of the allegations, in what could be a “career death penalty case,” focused on his client’s work as a judge or a specific case.

“It’s a campaign to take him down,” he said.