To hear the testimony of the women who worked for them, Vincent George Sr. and his son were not the violent and manipulative sex traffickers that prosecutors described, but, rather, the heads of a happy extended family working together for a brighter collective future.

“The whole point to our family was just to become better,” said Danielle Geissler, one of the two women who testified on Tuesday. “This wasn’t our lifestyle. This wasn’t something where we said, ‘Hey, I’m going to do this until I’m gray.’ ”

Ms. Geissler testified for the defense on Tuesday at the Georges’ trial in State Supreme Court in Manhattan. The Georges’ lawyers have conceded that the father and son were promoting prostitution, but they are fighting the sex trafficking charges, which carry a possible prison sentence of up to 25 years.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office has described Ms. Geissler and her colleagues as victims — women who were coerced and intimidated by the Georges and kept in prostitution under the threat of beatings and withheld money.