Alan Jones has enjoyed decades as the centre of attention, as the wielder of power.

The booming voice, the vast radio audience, the bully pulpit of an eponymous TV show, the great and the good on speed-dial, a staffer in the prime ministerial office dubbed the “minister for Alan Jones”: these were not ancillaries peripheral to the Jones empire, they were central to it.

Even walking into court on Monday, at the epicentre of a glacially moving press pack, it was all about Alan.

That evaporated as soon as he stepped inside the claustrophobic confines of court 3.1.

Here he is simply “the defendant”.

Stripped of his dominance, his control and his voice, Jones is forced instead to listen, as 22 separate allegations are detailed against him.

Jones has pleaded not guilty. He is – as he has consistently asserted – entitled to the presumption of innocence.

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At first, Jones sat not in the dock but behind his lawyers, with whom he quietly conversed and occasionally showed handwritten notes, recorded with a silver pen in a black notebook.

At one point, Jones was asked to move to another seat across the courtroom.

He would have been in the eyeline of the first witness – Complainant J – and the court wanted Jones moved to a place where he could not be seen by the man who would be the first to detail his charges against him.

From his silence, Jones’s legal strategy was apparent from the very first. He will, it was explicitly stated, seek to undermine the “credibility and reliability” of those who accuse him.

“Rivalry, treachery, double-dealing, money, hatred, desperation, opportunism and more are all at the heart of this case,” his barrister, Gabrielle Bashir SC, told the court, the first thundering sentence of her opening submission.

“Rumours and innuendo have been thrown at Alan Jones for years.”

Jones’s defence would expose, the court heard, “what [the complainants] did not tell the police, what they left out of their statements … but that we have discovered: concoction, contamination and reconstruction”.

“Mr Jones since day one has said he was not guilty of all these charges,” Bashir told the court.

“Mr Jones will have the opportunity to test the evidence in the prosecution case including the credibility and the reliability of the complainants.”

This is a trial over 22 alleged indecent assault and sexual touching offences..

In opening submissions, the prosecution argued a common thread emerged, of people too afraid, too indebted, too ashamed, to speak up in their own defence.

The court heard that Jones had allegedly been financially supporting the family of Complainant A. The then-17-year-old was invited to stay at Jones’s Fitzroy Falls property. There, in a bedroom, he alleges Jones forced himself on him, kissing him and grabbing his penis.

The teenager told no one about it but 10 days later wrote, in a letter to his mother, “Someone in power did something they should not have and I was so worried because of all the help they had offered”, according to the prosecution’s opening.

Another teenager, a star schoolboy athlete from a similarly impecunious background, was given a weekly stipend by Jones, a mobile phone “to keep in contact” and later, a car. Jones allegedly grabbed him on the penis as he drove Jones to his country property, the court heard.

After an alleged incident in which Jones kissed him – un-consented, on the mouth “with a chomping motion … smothering” – Jones is alleged to have told Complainant J “you’ve been a really good boy, I’m going to give you some more money”.

Complainant C worked for Jones at a radio station, and was repeatedly groped by Jones, the court heard. The court heard that, as C drove Jones home from work, Jones would grab C on the penis, rubbing his hand up and down.

The prosecution alleged Jones would talk about C’s penis, “calling him ‘Donkey’ and saying things like ‘It’s not really that big is it?’ and ‘when can I see it?’”

The court was told the prosecution would present as evidence text messages sent by Jones to C, commenting on the “size of his penis, dismay at never having seen C’s penis” and declarations of love.

The court heard C did not invite, nor want to receive, the messages, but felt he had to reply, “concerned about his position in the media industry if he overtly rejected” Jones’s propositions.

Complainant F, who was 17 when he alleges Jones squeezed his buttocks at a public event, told his mother of the assault, but did not report it to police because he “felt nobody would believe his word over the defendant’s”.

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Complainant J was the first witness to take the stand. A record-breaking junior athlete when he fell into Jones’s orbit, he is now a middle-aged man, but retains a sportsman’s build and singular focus.

Asked to relive his allegations against Jones, J repeatedly took time to compose himself, closing his eyes and asking the court for a moment while he sought to replay in his mind the specifics of incidents, some of them more than two decades old.

J told the court Jones grabbed and squeezed his penis as he drove Jones to his country property, the older man asking “does it feel good?”. In another incident at Jones’s Circular Quay apartment, J gave evidence Jones allegedly hugged him and kissed him without his consent. J’s coach was waiting downstairs in a car for him.

Prosecutor Georgina Wright asked why J didn’t tell his coach what had just happened.

“If I told someone … all of a sudden I would lose everything. I come from a small family, we struggled our whole lives, and I was getting everything handed to me, it was a wonderful life.

“I thought if I told someone what was happening, I would lose everything.”

J told the court he was conflicted by his friendship with Jones.

Jones was generous and supportive, he says, Jones had given him a financial security he’d not known in his life. But there was a price to pay, J said.

“I was fearful of him, but I was also accepting these things from him. And I didn’t want to lose those things.

“The friendship, I would say, was tainted by the things that were going on.

“For me it was a fearful relationship.”

The trial continues.