An ex-girlfriend of San Francisco Sheriff Ross Mirkarimi who says he physically abused her four years ago can testify in the domestic violence trial involving an alleged incident involving his wife on New Year's Eve, a judge ruled Monday.

Prosecutors asked trial court Judge Garrett Wong to allow Christina Flores to take the stand to recount for jurors four alleged incidents of verbal abuse, one of which elevated into violence, to show a pattern of domestic abuse "against his intimate female partners," said Assistant District Attorney Elizabeth Aguilar Tarchi.

Wong said he would allow Flores' testimony, but he did not rule on Mirkarimi's defense attorney's request Monday for a change of venue.

"Extensive pre-trial publicity and the unique factors in this case make it difficult to seat a fair and impartial jury or inoculate a panel from publicity," said Lidia Stiglich, Mirkarimi's lead defense attorney.

Flores' described during her pre-trial testimony the volatile relationship she had with Mirkarimi from 2007 to 2008.

She said the then-San Francisco supervisor grabbed her arm hard enough to cause bruising after she confronted him in February 2008 when she found a pair of women's underwear in his apartment that did not belong to her. She said he grabbed her after she told him she would leave him.

Mirkarimi now faces three misdemeanor charges of domestic violence battery, dissuading a witness and child endangerment for allegedly bruising the arm of his wife, Eliana Lopez, during a New Year's Eve argument in front of their 2-year-old son.

Mirkarimi, sworn in as sheriff in January, has pleaded not guilty, and Lopez has refused to cooperate with authorities. Prosecutors brought the charges after a neighbor called police to report the alleged abuse. The neighbor, Ivory Madison, shot a 55-second video of Lopez displaying the bruise and tearfully talking about what happened, according to police and prosecutors.

Attorneys for Lopez and Mirkarimi were unsuccessful in trying to persuade Wong to keep the video and other communications between Lopez and Madison out of the trial. Now the admissibility question is before the Superior Court's Appellate Division, and may delay the start of the trial beyond jury selection, which is now under way.

Flores said two of their fights were about underwear. The first one, she said, was soon after they started dating. He was angry that she had left a pair of her panties at his place, and returned them, she said. The second time she found a pair of another woman's underwear at his apartment, she said.

The on-and-off again couple also fought about Lopez, a Venezuelan actress who met Mirkarimi at a conference in South America and got pregnant during what Flores said he told her was a one-night encounter. Flores said she wanted him to return her possessions left at his house. "I don't wish to add them to your ex-girlfriend graveyard at your home," she said she told him.

She said they also discussed his future plans for his impending fatherhood. She said he told her he didn't want the child to be raised in Venezuela, which he described as a "third-world country," and "filthy." She said he told her he planned to bring Lopez to the United States and set her up in her own "baby mama" apartment. "He wanted to be like Willie Brown," she said, apparently referring to the daughter that Brown, a former mayor and current San Francisco Chronicle columnist, had out of wedlock with his fundraiser.

Stiglich, in trying to keep Flores from testifying at trial, asked why she never reported the alleged violence and waited to come forward. Flores said she decided to file a police report after media reports surfaced that Lopez was refusing to cooperate with police and prosecutors and suggested in interviews that the case against her husband was politically motivated. "I felt she was bullied into taking her story back," Flores said.