The Southern Tasmanian man was supported by four people, including an elderly woman, in the Supreme Court on Friday.

They had also attended his earlier appearance in Launceston this week.

The prisoner, 50, who was actively involved with the Salvation Army and Anglican churches in the South, moved to the North after his crimes were discovered to work in cleaning.

The man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, consulted his local minister for advice when he was found out but was told that police would first need a complaint.

He had pleaded guilty to having maintained a sexual relationship with a young person under the age of 17, indecent assault and aggravated sexual assault.

Justice Robert Pearce jailed the prisoner for 10 years, backdated to May 19, with a non-parole period of six years.

He said the man robbed his daughter of her childhood.

"She was subjected to repeated depraved and degrading sexual acts," Justice Pearce said.

"The impact on his victim is profound.

"She has low self-worth and problems with self-harm and suicidal thoughts."

The prisoner began to sexually abuse his daughter when she was four years old and it continued until her early teens in about 2010, when she grew strong enough to push him away, with further offending last year.

He told his daughter that the sexual acts were what she wanted and she feared getting pregnant.

The man's crimes were uncovered in mid-2014 when he caught his daughter "sexting" her boyfriend and raped her as a demonstration of what would happen if she showed naked photos of herself to men.

The girl cried and her mother walked in, saw her naked husband and daughter and then asked her husband to apologise, but their distressed daughter shied away. Later, when a suggestion of family counselling was made, the girl told her mother about the years of sexual assault that she had suffered.

Police found the girl's naked photographs on her father's laptop and he denied the years of incest that he had committed.