A young girl was allegedly raped by Cameron Flynn Tully as she waited for other children to hide during a game of hide and seek, a court has heard.
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The woman, then nearly four-years-old, gave a detailed account of the alleged molestation in the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday morning, more than 23 years after she says Tully came to her home.
“There’s some things you don’t forget,” she said.
Tully is facing 23 charges against eight young girls.
He is accused of abusing many of the girls at his family’s “Hillview” farm in Cook, which played host to regular church and home birthing meetings.
His ACT Supreme Court trial is now in its second week, and the last of the young girls have given their evidence.
Some, including Tuesday morning’s first witness, allege they were abused at other places around Canberra.
The woman told the court that her family had hosted a family day with some of the Tully family and a group of other children in late 1990 or early 1991.
She said the children were playing hide and seek, and she was chosen to find others.
The woman said she was too young to count to one hundred, so Tully came inside the home with her while the other children hid outside.
“I started to count and he said, ‘we’ll do this while we count’,” she said.
Tully is then alleged to have laid her down, and molested and raped her.
“I was looking up to the ceiling mainly and not wanting to look.”
She said it took place in the middle of the home’s living area, and described the weight of his body as “suffocating and terrifying”.
Afterwards, she said he told her to go outside and finish the game.
She said she never spoke to anyone about the incident for years, but eventually said something to her mother.
Tully’s barrister Ray Livingston questioned the woman over her “precise memory” of the incident, despite her young age and the time since the event.
He repeatedly asked her if she was making the story up, before suggesting Tully had never been to her home, and that the alleged acts had never occurred.
She denied both suggestions.
Later on Tuesday, another complainant gave evidence of being molested in a dilapidated shed at the Hillview property.
Her mother gave evidence that Tully’s mother, Maureen Tully, had “tight control” over the family and the group at the Hillview farm.
The woman said she was scared of coming forward when one of her daughters told her of the alleged abuse.
The trial continues before Justice John Burns on Wednesday.
