WARNING: This story deals with sexual offending and may be distressing.
A father was moved to tears yesterday as he listened to audio of his daughter disclosing the alleged abuse she suffered at the hands of a Cromwell man.
Earlier this week in the trial in the Dunedin District Court, the 8-year-old girl told the jury the “bad guy” had touched her “private parts” on many occasions.
The defendant has pleaded not guilty to three charges of sexual contact with a child.
The man, who has interim name suppression, says the repetitive groping simply did not happen and yesterday the jury watched his police interview.
The defendant, who worked night shifts, described how the girl had been using his phone to watch YouTube videos in his bed while he slept.
When the detective conducting the interview put the child’s allegations to the man he said: “No, no, not true. Um, and actually our bed is quite big because it is a king size ... and I always sleep in the right, on the edge of the bed.”
“So explain why [she] would say such a thing,” the detective said.
“Um, no idea,” the man said.
The defendant’s partner told the jury she was a full-time mother and the young girl was like a daughter to her.
“I was always there ... I would not separate myself from her until she would go to sleep and then after that I would feel at ease,” she said.
The young girl earlier told the jury she had tried to talk to the defendant’s partner about the abuse by saying the man was bothering her, but his partner said it never happened.
“Lies. She never told me anything.’’
Cross-examination of the complainant’s father was also completed yesterday.
A cellphone recording revealed the young girl telling her father the alleged abuse happened “when I am sleeping and I open my eyes at night”.
As the audio recording was played to refresh the father’s memory, he put his head in his hands and cried.
Counsel Brian Kilkelly suggested the complainant’s father had been the catalyst for the serious allegations and had asked the girl to “give a made-up story to the police” in order to attain full custody of his child.
“No, I never did that,” the father said.
“She was scared of telling what had happened because she didn’t want her mother to have problems with [the defendant] as they were friends.
“The only thing I did was tell her we had to talk to the police too, to make justice.”
The girl’s mother described how she forged a strong friendship with the defendant and his partner when the pair offered to take care of her daughter, becoming so close they were “like family”.
The only concern she had was when she found out her daughter had been sleeping in the defendant’s “matrimonial bed” on occasion.
The child reportedly told her mother she “realised it was enough” when the man allegedly invited her into her bed to watch television and began indecently touching her while his family were in the other room.
The jury will hear closing arguments today.
The new free open-air saltwater pool is already proving popular.