Woman sexually abused daughter to satisfy husband, Perth court told

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19 hours ago

WARNING: This story contains graphic and distressing content.
A woman has gone on trial in Perth for allegedly sexually abusing her daughter in a case her own lawyer has described as "confronting" and "disturbing".
The mother, who is now 41, allegedly engaged in sexual acts with her prepubescent daughter along with her husband, who had expressed an interest in incest at an early stage in their relationship.
Prosecutor Sean Stocks said the girl, who is now a teenager, was a "sexual plaything" for the mother and her husband, with abuse occurring several times a week after they arrived in Australia.
The District Court heard the mother, who lived in another country with her eight-year-old daughter, started communicating with the Perth man online in 2016.
Prosecutor Sean Stocks said the mother took photos of her child engaged in sexual acts, and used live-streaming "to satisfy his sexual fantasies".
As the complainant grew up, the court heard, the man asked his partner: "What do you think about me liking our daughter the way I do?"
"I like that I'm different," he allegedly told her.
"I love child incest and child sex".
Around this time the mother accepted the man's marriage proposal and she and her daughter moved to Perth.
The prosecutor said sexual acts involving the girl started when the man visited the pair in their home country, and continued in Perth.
"Two to three times a week for three years," Mr Stocks told the court, with the man eventually using a condom to guard against pregnancy.
The mother recorded some of these events, the court heard.
The stepfather would tell the girl "how brave she was" when they had sex, the court heard.
But the girl had started telling him she was unwell or had homework, in order to avoid being abused.
Mr Stocks said she would also try to eat her dinner as slowly as she could, knowing what was to happen after.
Police arrested the man in 2021 over an unrelated matter and seized electronic devices, at which point they found an explicit handwritten note from the daughter.
The court was told the mother and her daughter moved away from the man, to another suburb in Perth, but the woman still sent intimate photos of the teenager to him.
She told police she had sent the photos because he threatened to cancel her visa and send her back to her home country. He also suggested he would commit suicide if she did not comply.
"The content of this trial is disturbing and confronting," the woman's lawyer Simon Freitag told the court, describing the stepfather's offending as "evil and persistent".
However, he said his client did not accept she had "physically offended" against the girl.
He said it would be up to the judge to determine if she was a "willing and conscious party" to the offending.
The woman has pleaded not guilty to possessing child exploitation material, producing child exploitation material, sexual penetration of a child under 13 and persistently engaging in sexual conduct with a child under 16.
The trial is continuing.