A young child tried to stop her father from indecently assaulting her mother in their family home, a court has heard.
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A Northern Tasmanian man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded guilty to four counts of indecent assault against his partner.
The 30-year-old appeared before Justice Robert Pearce in the Launceston Supreme Court on Tuesday.
The man and his partner were together for seven years before separating in June 2017.
The woman remained in the family home with the couple’s three children and in May this year the man began having contact with the children at the home.
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Crown prosecutor Luke Brett told the court during one of those visits in June, the victim asked her ex-partner to leave so she could go to bed.
But he did not leave, instead he took off his trousers, walked into the woman’s room and got on top of her while she was lying in bed.
He tried to “pull her clothes off”, then he put his “hands down her pants” and “touched her vagina”.
The offender called the victim to apologise for his behaviour later that night, but the man assaulted the woman another three times on separate occasions, the court was told.
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During another visit with the children the offender pushed the victim and again touched her vagina, despite the woman telling him not to.
The couple’s young daughter tried to intervene, telling her father to stop because “mummy doesn’t like it”.
Defence lawyer James Oxley told the court his client made no excuse for what he had done.
He feels “terrible, ashamed and remorseful” and wanted to publicly apologise to his children, their mother and her family for his actions. The man will be sentenced on Friday.