‘IT WAS LIKE HE WAS A DEMON’

Teen’s chilling account of abuse: ’It was like he was a demon’

A SOUTHERN Tasmanian girl had her childhood “stolen” by her father who repeatedly sexually abused her from the age of six, a court has heard.

A southern Tasmanian man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded guilty yesterday to maintaining a sexual relationship with a person under the age of 17.

In the Supreme Court in Hobart before Justice Michael Brett, the court heard that at various locations in southern Tasmania, the man sexually abused his daughter, starting from when she was six years old, for about a decade.

Crown prosecutor Jackie Hartnett told the court the girl’s parents separated when she was just six months old and she would stay with her father on every second weekend until 2011 and then every weekend until 2018.

She said the girl was abused by her father on almost every visit and she cannot remember a time when she was not sexually abused by her father.

He told his daughter he would kill himself if she told anyone, but other times he would apologise for what he was doing.

Ms Hartnett said the girl’s earliest memory of the abuse was at age six when the family was staying at a friend’s property and the man abused her in her bed and told her to be quiet and “not wake up her brother.”

In 2010, the accused remarried, but continued to regularly rape his daughter on the foldout bed in the lounge room where she slept when she stayed with him and his new wife.

Ms Hartnett said there had been hundreds of non-consensual sexual assaults over the decade.

The case came to the attention of Tasmania Police after the girl told her school psychologist about the assaults.

In an interview with police, the accused said he was sick.

“There’s a sickness that lives in me and I can’t control it,” he said.

“I knew it was wrong and I just couldn’t stop.”

The girl, now aged 16, read her victim impact statement in court.

“I wasn’t able to live like other kids. My childhood was stolen by someone who was supposed to care for me ... by the man I call my dad,” she said. “It was like his soul wasn’t there. It was like he was a demon and that’s how I saw him.”

The girl said she suffered from nightmares as a result of the abuse.

“He took my life away,” she told the court.

Defence lawyer Rochelle Mainwaring said the man did not dispute any of the Crown’s facts and she would seek a mental health report to determine his future risk of offending and if there was an explanation for his behaviour.

The man was remanded in custody for sentencing submissions on March 28.