A NSW father married off his 12-year-old daughter to a man more than twice her age in an Islamic ceremony because the girl got her period and he was worried she was becoming interested in boys, a court has heard.

The 63-year-old man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, pleaded not guilty to procuring a child under 14 for unlawful sexual activity and accessory before the fact.

His trial at Sydney’s Downing Centre District Court heard that he gave a 26-year-old Lebanese man the girl’s mobile number despite his daughter saying she did not want to marry the man.

The girl was not interested at first but eventually began texting the man back and then agreed to marry him in January 2014.

The court heard that the man allowed the pair to get married under Islamic law in the living room of his Hunter Valley home and despite the objections of his ex-wife, the girl’s mother.

“He was very forceful when he told (her mother) — he said the next time she saw her daughter, she would be married,” crown prosecutor Siobhan Herbert said at the opening of his trial today.

After the ceremony, the father told his daughter not to use contraception and not to let her new “husband” use contraception, the court heard.

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Ms Herbert said the man was happy for his daughter to be married because she had got her period and he was worried that she would start to become interested in boys.

“He thought it would stop the sin of extramarital sex,” Ms Herbert said.

The pair then spent the first week of their marriage having sex in different hotel rooms before visiting the father’s home at the weekend.

The court heard that her father arranged for them to sleep in the same bed and also asked the girl the next morning if she needed to shower before morning prayers and his daughter said she did.

Ms Herbert said the question was meant to figure out whether the pair had sex that night.

Authorities only found out about the relationship because the “husband” was applying to become her guardian in order to enrol her in year 7 at a Sydney high school.

The man, now 27, pleaded guilty to persistent sexual abuse of a child and was earlier this month sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison with a non-parole period of seven-and-a-half years.

The girl, who is now 14, was also found to have fallen pregnant soon after her “husband” was charged in January last year.

She was taken to hospital after complaining of suffering sharp right lower abdominal pain and medical tests revealed that she was having an ectopic pregnancy and had miscarried.

An ectopic pregnancy is when the pregnancy develops outside the uterus and in many cases in one of the fallopian tubes.

The trial continues.