THE Cork man charged with sexually assaulting his former girlfriend's teenage daughter has denied her allegations at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court and said she had never liked him.
He rejected the suggestion from Mr Patrick McCarthy, prosecuting, that he left the girl's home suddenly in November 1993 because he was thrown out for interfering with her. He claimed he left because he was annoyed at catching the girl's mother in a compromising situation with one of his oldest male friends.
The mother told the jury of six men and six women they had lived like "brother and sister" without sexual contact for almost two years before she ordered him out. He said this was untrue.
Earlier the girl, who had left the video link room the previous evening, evidently stressed under questioning and refusing to answer any more questions, returned and completed her evidence from the witness box.
The jury also heard both the woman and the accused man admit they had smoked cannabis and used magic mushrooms".
The 36 year old man has pleaded not guilty to 20 charges of indecent assault and sexual assault on the girl from 1989 to 1993. He told Judge Kieran O'Connor and the jury he never practised "gratuitous violence" on the woman's children. He would sometimes chastise them with a belt but never with the buckle, as had been claimed.
The girl's mother said she had caught him "loads of times in her daughter's bedroom and had suspicions. She recalled a 1990 incident recounted in evidence by the girl. Witness said she was in the bed between her daughter and the accused when his hand came across and touched the girl indecently. She had a row with her lover over that but her daughter denied it had happened before.
The woman said that one morning he left their bed and she knew immediately where he was. She crept into the girl's bedroom and found him with his hand under the bedclothes and her daughter "hanging out" the other side trying to escape.
The trial continues.