He claimed his memory was foggy and he couldn’t tell his daughter from his wife.

But that explanation didn’t fly in a London courtroom when a 43-year old man was sentenced to five years in prison for incest and sexual assault.

“A strong message must be sent,” said Superior Court Justice Alissa Mitchell in her sentencing decision.

Even though the victim was legally an adult at the time of the assault, Mitchell ruled she was still a vulnerable teenager, totally dependent on her father, and decided that the minimum sentence for incest involving a child under the age of 16 was appropriate.

The case focused on an 18-year old woman — the man’s biological daughter — who agreed to move into his home after years in foster care awaiting adoption.

She had contacted him through her biological mother and social media. At 18, she no longer could stay in foster care and the father invited her to live with him and his family.

“I was finally going to have a family, a real family,” she wrote in a victim impact statement. “I felt like I was coming home and my life was truly beginning.”

She thought her father was “the coolest dad ever” and developed a bond even though she felt pressured to drink with him. While sober, she said, he gave her the cold shoulder, but with alcohol, they had happy times together.

After living with her father for a little more than four months, she experienced what she called “the ultimate betrayal.”

In his testimony at his trial earlier this year, the man initially claimed he had no memory of the events on Sept. 21, 2013, from midnight, after he fell and hit his shoulder against a wall in the basement, until hours later when he was standing naked and his daughter lying naked on the basement futon.

He said he wasn’t drunk or high on drugs and he didn’t hit his head. There was no medical evidence to explain his blackout.

He said he had no memory of having sex with her. He had “a fleeting recollection” as the judge described it in her trial decision in July, of his wife when he drove her home from work just before having sex with the teen.

He told the judge that once he was “horrified” to find himself in bed with his daughter and was “disgusted with himself.” He said that after the sex, he felt “violated.”

He also told the court that the futon had been the matrimonial bed for eight years before his daughter moved in with them. He didn’t know he’d had sex with her until DNA tests showed that his semen was in her vagina and his saliva was found on her breasts.

He asked the judge to consider that he had no intent to commit the crimes because he thought he was having sex with his wife.

The man’s explanation flew in the face of what the daughter told the court. Mitchell called her testimony “unchallenged and uncontradicted in any meaningful way.”

“I found her to be an honest and credible witness. She had a clear recollection of the events of that morning,” the judge wrote in the decision.

She testified that the man had made unwanted sexual advances toward her before.

She told him, “I am your daughter, not your wife. “

Earlier in the evening, she and her father had been drinking in the basement of the home, while three other children were asleep upstairs. She testified he smoked a cigarette and talked to her on the patio. While she was lying on the futon, he gave her a massage and unhooked her bra. After answering the phone, he told her he would “finish up later.”

He drove to his wife’s work to pick her up and chose to go to the basement where his daughter pretended to be sleeping when his wife went upstairs to bed. The sex was unwanted and unprotected.

Her victim impact statement at his sentencing this week told of the far-reaching effect on her. She couldn’t handle being touched, avoided crowds, couldn’t get out of bed, eat or shower. She had nightmares and dropped out of school.

“I would cry for hours until I vomited almost every single night,” she said. She started to harm herself.

“My life lost all direction and purpose. I was falling through a black hole and could not escape,” she said.

She couldn’t hold down a job. She drank “every day to numb the pain and avoid my own thoughts.”

The man had a limited criminal record. He had no history of addiction and maintained a full-time job in the automotive field.

Mitchell noted that the man challenged the trial admissibility of the DNA evidence. When that application was lost, he denied knowing he had sex with her, then that he had amnesia.

“Despite having been found guilty of these offences beyond a reasonable doubt, (he) accepts no responsibility for his actions and instead believes he is the victim.”

In his pre-sentence report, he told the author that the victim “made a mess of our lives.”

The man has support of his family and friends, some of whom blame the teen.

The victim said she followed through with the court process out of love for her father so he can reflect on his life.

“I want my legacy to be love,” she said in her victim impact statement.

jsims@postmedia.com