An alleged victim of child sex abuse has told a court she remembered being molested by her carer's husband "as if it was yesterday".
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The Canberra man is facing trial in the ACT Supreme Court on 16 charges of child sexual abuse dating back to the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
Two of his alleged victims are his daughters; the other two alleged victims are children dropped at the home day care run by his wife.
The man, 74, who cannot be named, has pleaded guilty to three charges and not guilty to the remaining 13 charges.
On Monday one of the girls, now an adult, who was dropped at the day care gave evidence about several alleged incidents.
She said of an incident in which she had been taken under the house: "I remember so much about it, I remember it as if it were yesterday."
When she was about five or six years old, she said she remembered wearing a red and white dress and sitting on the man's lap on a chair under the house when he took her underwear off and molested her.
Prosecutor Trent Hickey asked the woman, who appeared in court via videolink, if she remembered how it felt.
"It felt pretty disgusting. It felt horrible," she said.
Under the house there was a workshop area, where there was a mattress in a space that could be hidden by a sheet, the court heard.
On one occasion, she said, the man took her into the mattress space and told her to be quiet when someone entered the workshop.
She said other incidents, including one in which he picked her up from school in his truck, were less clear in her memory.
In cross-examination, defence lawyer Amanda Tonkin suggested to the woman that at no time did the man touch her in a sexually inappropriate manner.
"I disagree," the woman replied.
The accused also took the stand to give evidence on Monday. The defence case is that after the three incidents against his daughter to which he has pleaded guilty, he did not touch anyone inappropriately.
The man told the court that after the incidents against his daughter, he had a conversation with his wife in which he "told her that I had interfered with [the daughter] on several occasions."
He told the jury that he had told his wife: "If she wanted me to leave the home, I would and not return."
He denied any inappropriate touching against any other girls.
He has not yet been cross-examined.
The trial continues before Justice Michael Elkaim.
