Originally Posted by News
A Victorian teenager has been ordered to stand trial for the murder of her stepfather who allegedly took nearly 10,000 pornographic pictures of her in four years.
The Shepparton Magistrates' Court was told that on March 13 last year, the stepdaughter shot the 34-year-old in the back of the head to put an end to daily sexual abuse that began when she was 14.
The man's dismembered torso was unearthed in a shallow grave in the backyard of their Mooroopna home on April 9 and further remains were discovered two days later at a campsite nearby at Old Toolamba, in Victoria's north.
The teenager, now 19, has pleaded not guilty to murder.
Her defence barrister Peter Chadwick told the court on the night of his death, the woman's stepfather ordered the accused to go to a shed at the back of their home where he demanded she perform oral sex on him.
Mr Chadwick told the court when the teenager declined, citing a sore throat, the stepfather removed a shotgun from his gun cabinet, loaded it and asked her to rethink her answer.
After she performed the act, she moved behind him and seeing the loaded shotgun lying on the ground, picked it up and fired it at the back of his head.
Mr Chadwick said the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, told police her motive for her actions was so "she wouldn't have to do it again".
Under cross-examination, Victoria Police homicide squad Detective Senior Constable Barry Gray said soon after the teenager was charged, police seized a series of still and video pornographic images the deceased had taken of her, which he had stored in the shed.
He agreed while there were many pictures of the pair engaged in sexual activity, "by far the large majority were of just the accused."
He agreed that among the images was one of the accused tied to a chair with cable ties and towels.
Det Sen Const Gray said the images dated from January 2004 until February 2008 and constituted child pornography.
Mr Chadwick told Magistrate Ian von Einem the images cast no doubt on the girl's claims of sustained sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather.
"It has been videoed, photographed and is clear for all to see," he said.
"He had used the images to blackmail her into submission. Asked by police what she thought would have happened if she hadn't killed him, she said she probably would have killed herself because she could not keep living the way she was."
But Crown prosecutor Mark Gamble said the teenager's dismembering of the body and attempts to cover up the murder, along with forming a relationship with a man her stepfather had banned her from seeing three days after his death, could be construed as something other than self-defence.
"She shot him so she didn't have to do it again... a jury could form the view, albeit against a background of abuse, it was not committed in self-defence," he said.
The accused was ordered to appear at a directions hearing in the Victorian Supreme Court on January 27.
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