The very man who saved a teenage girl from a life of shocking abuse and ended up in court accused of sexually abusing her was yesterday acquitted after the “victim” renounced criminal action against her now husband.

The man, who cannot be named by court order, was charged after the girl’s mother filed a police report accusing him of sexually abusing her daughter in January 2006.

As the case got under way, however, the full horror of what the girl had to endure was exposed – but it is her mother’s partner who is now accused of abusing her, ever since she was nine years old.

The abuse allegedly went on for years until she reached her teens and it was the accused who managed to extract the girl from her violent home and into sheltered housing.

He said he had witnessed several incidents including the partner beating her with a wooden stick and kicking her as she lay on the floor. After he gave his testimony, charges were filed against the man and proceedings are still underway.

The girl testified that it was the accused who helped her escape from the house after witnessing at first hand the beatings she used to endure.

The girl’s mother had refused to believe her. When the daughter threatened to file a police report after a particularly bad beating, she allegedly got a beating from her mother too.

Magistrate (now Judge) Jacqueline Padovani said that from the evidence produced it emerged that the accused had started dating the girl when she was a teenager and he was already 18. The two had a consensual sexual relationship. Then, at the very first opportunity after she turned 18, the girl renounced criminal action.

It was the girl who probably pushed the sexual relationship because she was scared that she was going to lose her virginity to her mother’s partner through rape, the magistrate said.

She took note of the fact that the accused was also charged with offending public morals, even though the sexual acts took place behind closed doors, so she acquitted him of that charge too.