An Illawarra woman has accused her stepfather of indecently assaulting her as a child and interfering with the family dog, in a legal he-said-she-said that has also pitted mother against daughter.
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Police charged the man with three offences after the woman, now aged in her mid-20s, detailed her claims to police in May last year.
She alleges she was 12 years old and sharing a set of bunk beds with her sleeping sister at the family’s Koonawarra home when her stepfather touched her inappropriately.
“I woke up during the night and [he] had his hand in my underwear,” said the woman, who broke down in tears while giving evidence at Wollongong Local Court Thursday morning. “[He said] he thought I had wet myself.”
She said she was 16 years old when the man surprised her by being completely naked as she returned to the family loungeroom one night.
She told the court he began shaving his pubic region with an electric device and invited her to touch him and assist with the shaving.
“I said I didn’t want to. I ended up going to bed when I got really uncomfortable.”
She claims she surprised the man in the lounge room another night later that year, and found him “naked with an erect penis, trying to get the dog to come towards him”.
“He was on his knees … he was saying ‘come on’ and holding his penis,” she said.
She told the court the man and her mother were drinking a 750ml bottle of bourbon between them each night during that period, and that her mother would go to bed “whenever she’d had enough to drink”.
The man denied all allegations in an interview with police.
“I’ve never done anything like that before,” he said.
Confronted with the claims involving the dog, he said: “what? I’ve got a partner I can do that to If I wanted to. Why would I do that?”.
“[I’m] a bit sick in the stomach to be honest, about a lot of the stuff you’ve said.”
The court heard the woman had fallen out with her mother over a sum of Centrelink money she said she never received, but was asked to repay. The pair hadn’t spoken for several years.
The mother was in court on Thursday to give evidence supporting the man, who remains her partner.
She denied her daughter ever raised the allegations with her. Another of her daughters – the woman’s sister – also appeared as a defence witness
The woman is partially relying on journal entries she wrote years after the alleged abuse, when she was aged about 19.
The matter, before Magistrate Cate Follent, will return to court on May 3 for sentencing submissions.