A court has heard how families were bullied, intimidated and placed on a hierarchy on the Tully's religious "Hillview" farm, where eight young girls were allegedly molested over more than a decade.
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One mother said she was so scared she couldn't go to her husband after their daughter told her she was sexually abused by one of the Tully family members, Cameron Flynn Tully, in 1998.
"You don't understand the way the group worked," she said on Thursday.
"Whatever you said got back to people ... I was very weak."
Mr Tully is currently on trial in the ACT Supreme Court for 23 offences against eight young girls in the 1990s and early 2000s.
He has maintained his innocence and is fighting the charges.
The abuse is alleged to have occurred on a West Belconnen property, where families gathered for Christian ladies meetings, Sunday church, home-birthing groups, and other regular events.
Parents would bring their children, who were often supervised by older Tully family members, while the adults met.
On Thursday, the fourth day of the trial, a mother gave evidence that her daughter told her in 1998 that she was abused by Mr Tully.
She said she reacted with shock and disbelief, but later approached Mr Tully's mother, Maureen Tully, and asked her about it.
She said Mrs Tully brought her son Cameron over, and asked her to repeat the claims.
It took more than a decade for the allegations to eventually reach police, and the woman never told her husband.
Defence barrister Ray Livingston asked her why she had not told her husband, if she was so concerned that she would go to Mr Tully's mother.
She responded that she was scared it would be circulated through the wider group, saying everyone talked behind each other's backs.
"No one talked to each other, no one trusted each other," she said.
"I was scared."
The woman gave evidence of being bullied by the Tully family, and spoke of an occasion when Mr Tully's mother told her she shouldn't have had children because she was too stupid.
She said the bullying became increasingly "vitriolic" after she spoke to Mrs Tully about her daughter's allegations.
Mr Livingston suggested that conversation had never taken place and the woman broke down in tears, sobbing in the witness box.
The barrister also suggested to the woman she had got her years mixed up.
The woman told him that she knew the years well and had used her children's birthdays as markers.
"And, by the way, this is something you don't forget either," she said.
"It's burned into my memory."
The trial continues on Thursday afternoon before Justice John Burns.