Embattled Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts, accused of groping a teen Tuesday while taking a photo with a group of cheerleaders, has a long history of successfully fending off disturbing allegations against him.

Butts came under fire Wednesday for allegedly grabbing the butt of a teen while she posed for a picture with him at a city hall community event. Residents and activists in the community are pushing for the longtime mayor to resign. His office denied any misconduct.

But Butts has survived a steady onslaught of otherwise devastating allegations, that have been dismissed, including a 1993 criminal referral alleging he molested his young daughter.

His then-estranged wife, police sergeant Minnie Butts, said that their daughter told her that the former Santa Monica Police Chief “touched and penetrated her vagina with his finger,” according to the Los Angeles Times. Minnie also alleged the mayor “choked her to unconsciousness” in 1991. Butts denied any wrongdoing at the time.

The local district attorney declined to press charges in the matter, citing insufficient evidence.

After finishing his career in law enforcement in 2006 and working a stint as head of security for the LAX airport authority, he won election as Inglewood’s mayor in 2011. He pledged to solve the city’s financial problems and boost its efficiency.

“The city is in a precarious financial position,” Butts told the Los Angeles Times before he was elected.

“They need someone who has operational, executive, and public safety experience … Not just a politician.”

One of his first controversial moves in office was to award a $100 million contract to a waste management company in 2012 that had hired his brother just months earlier. He personally profited from the deal, later reports showed.

Meanwhile, he held a scandalous relationship with a city employee, Melanie McDade-Dickens, whom he first met in 2010 while she was a volunteer on his mayoral campaign. He hired her as his executive assistant when he won the election.

Then he allegedly began soliciting her for workplace sex, demanding she do his laundry and massage his “aching feet” up to four times a day, according to a 2021 wrongful termination lawsuit filed against him. Butts bumped McDade-Dickens’ pay up from $135,069 in 2013 to $349,077 in 2019 due to additional responsibilities, the lawsuit claims.

There’s a picture of the pair standing at the construction site of SoFi Stadium in 2019. Butts is credited with bringing the Los Angeles Rams to the area.

But as their relationship soured, he took away her extra assignments and began docking her pay, she claimed.

“I showed up at work every single day, I didn’t miss an assignment, I was at every meeting that he eventually allowed me to be in,” McDade-Dickens said at a 2021 press conference. “I still maintained all of my daily activities, I never slacked. I would close my door sometimes and cry and bite my tongue, but I compartmentalized my work and my relationship.”

She was fired at the end of 2019. Her legal representation pointed to years of positive evaluations as evidence for her wrongful termination lawsuit.

Texts shared from McDade’s Facebook account in 2022 show a texter who appeared to be Butts — named “FOREVA Mr. Butts” — accusing McDade of infidelity. In another text marked from June 2018, the person laments her “cold” demeanor and apparent move to Scottsdale.

“My whole life is destroyed with you,” the text says. “You are so cold and so different and now you say you want to move to Scottsdale. I dont understand why you wont give us another chance…why you would just leave here…broken…”

Butts was allegedly obsessed with McDade-Dickens and began stalking her when she tried to end their relationship in 2018, her lawsuit claims. He allegedly began sneaking into her home to watch her sleep.

“When Ms. McDade attempted to end the relationship in 2018, it turned to stalking and obsession by Butts,” the lawsuit alleges. “At first, Butts would not ‘allow’ Ms. McDade to break up with him. He called her hundreds of times, would go to her house, uninvited, sneaking in through the garage and stand over her bed watching her sleep.”

The case was thrown out in November of last year after McDade-Dickens failed to file an opposition to a motion for a summary judgement. An attorney representing the city called it “frivolous from the start.” McDade-Dickens had requested an extension to the summary judgement hearing after she said she was looking for “permanent housing” and did not have phone service.

Butts also caught fire when he allegedly retaliated against Inglewood’s former longtime treasurer, Wanda Brown, for speaking out about the city’s “declining cash balance, its increasing deficit spending and growing negative fund balance, the need to curb spending, and about the wasteful and expensive use of outside consultants,” in 2020, her attorney said.

He then began cutting her microphone off when she went over her allotted speaking time and removing her reports from the agenda. The City Council cut her salary from $8,355 to $1,404 per month.

Her case went up to the California Supreme Court last year, and the high court ruled that because she is an elected official, not a state employee, she cannot invoke the associated retaliatory protections. The court sided with the city of Inglewood on the issue.

Butts has not directly responded to the recent allegations. He previously addressed all of the controversies against him with a simple statement to USA TODAY Sports in a piece about the new stadium.

“The only thing that’s controversial about me is that I get (expletive) done,’’ Butts said.

The California Post reached out to Butts’ campaign for comment.