“He’s a bad man,” a nine-year-old girl told a Brant OPP officer in a video seen this week at the trial of a Simcoe man accused of repeatedly sexually assaulting her.

“I would love to see him in jail and away from children.”

The girl, who was eight when she said the abuse began, was seen in a video of her original interview with police almost two years ago. She also testified by video, telling court about how she was forced in sexual acts by her mother’s common-law partner.

A publication ban protects the girl’s identity.

The 30-year-old man is charged with seven counts of sexual assault and sexual interference, two counts of invitation to sexual touching, a 2013 assault that did not involve the child, and a making sexual material available to a child.

When the man was arrested in 2018, police said they found images of child sexual abuse in his home.

In an opening statement at the trial on Monday, assistant Crown attorney Larry Brock said the man’s young victim also told police about “numerous verbal and physical altercations” she witnessed between her mother and the man.

The girl said the assaults began when the family was living in Paris. Over the course of a year, the assaults moved from rubbing the girl’s genitals and inserting his finger into her vagina to masturbation.

Court heard he got the girl to perform oral sex on him by showing her a YouTube video on his phone.

Once, while visiting the Port Dover beach, the man and the girl got in the back seat of his vehicle to “play” — his term for sexual activity. The girl said the vehicle had heavily tinted windows so passersby couldn’t see in.

The man put his penis between her buttocks and had the girl move up and down.

“We only did that once because, honestly, I found it was too much work,” the girl told the police interviewer.

Toward the end of 2017, the man and the child’s mother broke up. And, two months later, while visiting her grandmother, the girl disclosed the assaults.

Defence lawyer Dale Henderson asked the girl why she sometimes chose to remain at home with the man when her mother went out.

“I chose to stay loyal to (the man) even though I regret that now,” said the girl.

The child’s maternal grandmother testified that she had concerns about her daughter’s partner, especially after one time finding her daughter sobbing as the man insulted her.

“I advised her 10 times she needed to break up with him and she wouldn’t listen.”

The grandmother eventually took her concerns to her doctor.

The child and her mother were escorted to Brantford’s Superior Court by about a dozen members of Bikers Against Child Abuse, who seek to help young victims. The group has five Ontario chapters.

“BACA has given us full escorts to court through this process,” the child’s mother told The Expositor.

She said her daughter, who testified wearing a BACA vest, has been helped by the presence of the bikers.

“They have helped exponentially in rebuilding her strength and giving her a lack of fear.”

SGamble@postmedia.com

@EXPSGamble