An elected Michigan judge who faced withering press coverage after she sent three siblings to juvenile detention for refusing to eat lunch with their estranged father now faces possible discipline herself.

A complaint filed Monday by the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission says Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Lisa Gorcyca appears to have committed a long list of infractions, beginning a process that may result in her removal from office.

“This is a very serious matter,” says Paul Fischer, the commission’s executive director and general counsel. “This case has moved very quickly.”

The complaint and responses to it will be presented to an impartial "master" appointed by the state Supreme Court, who will issue findings of fact. The tenure commission then will issue a decision to the state Supreme Court, which may hold arguments before taking action.

“It’s a while to go before anything will happen,” Fischer says. Generally, it takes between a year and 18 months for a complaint to yield a final outcome.

Gorcyca, re-elected to a six-year term last year, ordered Liam Tsimhoni, Roee Tsimhoni and Natalie Tsimhoni – 13, 10 and 9 years old at the time – detained on June 24 after they refused to eat with their father, who had moved to Israel and remarried after a bitter divorce from Dr. Maya Eibschitz-Tsimhoni.

At the June hearing, the eldest child said he witnessed his father hit his mother, something Omer Tsimhoni has denied doing. Gorcyca declared the father “a great man” and likened the boy to a member of Charles Manson’s cult, telling him “you have no manners,” saying she doubted he had a high IQ and ordering him to spend summer in a detention facility where she said he would be “going to the bathroom in public” and may stay “until you graduate from high school.”

The judge made similar threats to the younger children, asking Natalie, “You want to have your birthdays in Children’s Village? Do you like going to the bathroom in front of people?” The girl, who cried during the hearing, ultimately chose not to eat with her father, either. (Read the full hearing transcript here.)

The judge reversed course and allowed the children to attend summer camp after more than two weeks, when her decision and verbal barbs at the children ignited a national media firestorm.

The complaint against Gorcyca says she may have committed a long list of infractions, including misconduct in office, conduct clearly prejudicial to the administration of justice, failure to be faithful to the law and maintain professional competence in it, conduct involving impropriety and the appearance of impropriety, and irresponsible or improper conduct which erodes public confidence in the judiciary.

The document accuses her of misrepresenting juvenile detention conditions to the children and of lying to investigators in an October response to the commission. "Respondent states that she did not find the children in contempt for their refusal to talk to or have lunch with their father," something a publicly available court transcript suggests is untrue and the complaint says "was false."

“Nobody ever wants to get lied to," Fischer says. "Judges certainly shouldn’t be lying and the state Supreme Court has said in past opinions that a judge who lies under oath isn’t fit to be a judge … but there are other serious allegations as well."

“If the findings go against Judge Gorcyca, the penalties can be anything from public censure to suspension without pay to actual removal from office,” he says.

The judge is being represented by attorney Tom Cranmer, who gave no hint that she would resign to avoid a grueling disciplinary process.

“We are extremely disappointed the Judicial Tenure Commission decided to proceed with a complaint but we are looking forward to telling the whole story of this tragic case at a formal hearing,” he says in an email. “In the end, we are confident that Judge Gorcyca will be vindicated and the complaint against her will be dismissed.”