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From her place in the witness box, she focused straight ahead, not wanting to look at her father on trial for incest.
And she kept her eyes turned away -- except once.
"He's the one who took my virginity," the 43-year-old woman said, looking at her 69-year-old father at the defence table.
He has pleaded not guilty to four sex-related offences, including incest.
Yesterday, the woman, whose identity is protected by court order, testified that she was virtually ignored as a child, only to be subjected to routine sexual advances from her father once she turned 15.
Through questions from Middlesex Crown Attorney Geoff Beasley, the university-educated woman said that when she was growing up, her family moved many times for her father's work and education.
The woman said she was a good student, but was not allowed to take part in any extra-curricular activities. Much of her free time was spent in housework and looking after a younger brother.
Her father often verbally abused her and made fun of her, she said.
The woman said she had "no relationship" with her mother and was not close to her father at all.
"It was not what I consider normal," she said.
But at 15, her father would call her to the bedroom when his wife was at work and ask her to sit on the bed.
The activity began to escalate to touching and fondling.
She was ordered to make sure her brothers were sleeping, then to join him.
Her father would say he loved her and not to tell, the woman testified.
He would tell her "this is the way fathers and daughters bonded if they didn't get a chance in earlier life."
The woman said she was confused and felt "terrible."
The family moved to London and the sexual advances moved to a new level.
Her father had sex with her on a couch the first time, she said.
After that, he would come to her room and have sex with her "once or twice a week."
He told her to keep quiet so her mother wouldn't hear. He never used birth control.
In late 1981, she discovered she was pregnant when her father found out that she had missed her period.
She had an abortion after her mother dropped her off at the hospital. Her father picked her up.
"I cried a lot on the operating table," she said. "I remember that a lot."
Earlier yesterday, Superior Court Justice Dougald McDermid saw a videotaped police interview with the man after his arrest in 2004.
During the interview, the man would not say he had sexual intercourse with his daughter on the advice of his lawyer.
But he called himself "a wicked person" and that he and his daughter were "very, very close in every way."
"I can't help feeling that I'm wicked, that I'm bad to do such a thing," he said.
"I feel I am the only one in the world who has done this," he said. "I told my wife what kind of beast I am."
The trial continues today.