The father of a teenage girl told a Supreme Court jury yesterday how he discovered that a 37-year-old married man was having sexual relations with his daughter — who was just 13 years old at the time of the alleged incidents.

The defendant, a British national who cannot be named for legal reasons, denies having unlawful carnal knowledge of the girl on July 24, July 29 and August 7, 2007.

In day six of the Supreme Court trial, jurors yesterday heard evidence from the girl's father, whom we also cannot name, who told the court of discovering what was happening with his daughter, of confronting the accused about his actions and of reporting the matter to Police.

The father said it all started when his wife, the girl's stepmother, called him on August 11 saying the girl had left the house abruptly and in a peculiar manner.

"I said to my wife," he told the court, "I would call her and find out what was going on.

"I got hold of her (on the phone) and I established where she was... she said she was going to see her friend."

However, after leaving the supermarket on his motorcycle, he found her walking on a road located behind the store.

"She said she was walking to her friend's house and I thought it was a curious route, I drove up and started talking to her."

Suddenly, the defendant also showed up, apparently to speak to his daughter, but appeared surprised the father was there. The father knew the defendant.

Then the father noticed things turned awkward.

"(The defendant) pulled his bike over, looked at me and said 'have you seen my dog?'" he said. "I told him I hadn't seen his dog. I thought it strange he would be there at that time about his dog, it was strange because (the defendant) stays quite a distance away from that location and the dog usually never wondered that far away."

The father described the defendant's face at that point as "red" and "embarrassed", as was the expression on his daughter's face. He added the whole thing looked like "a scheduled meeting".

Nevertheless, the defendant shortly left and the father took his daughter home on his bike. But before that, he confiscated her cell phone.

Back at the house, the father inspected the phone and checked its text messages folder. There, he discovered several inappropriate messages exchanged between his daughter and another number, which he subsequently learned was the defendant's.

Armed with that information, he immediately went to the defendant's home, the court heard, to confront him with the text messages and to investigate.

"When I approached the house," the father said, "I was shouting his name out... I walked pass his sliding doors, I couldn't see him.

"I looked into his bedroom, didn't see him, I walked to the side of the house, called his name, no answer.

"I then walked back to the sliding doors, looked inside and saw him laying on his bed with his dog.

"I asked him if anything was going on between him and my daughter, he denied it and said he wouldn't do something like that because of his children.

"I also said to him it was amazing how quickly he found his dog, he told me he found the dog just up the road."

After talking to the defendant for less than a minute, he left and returned home.

At the house, he demanded that his daughter bring up on the family computer her personal e-mail account and she complied.

Inside a folder marked with a nickname, he found around 50 emails that appeared to have been exchanged between someone and his daughter, jurors heard.

He would later learn the author of the emails was the defendant.

"I just read as many as I could," he said of the emails under examination by Crown Prosecutor Robert Welling.

"I could only read a few at a time because they were indecent and obscene."

At a later date, he forwarded some of the emails to Police and printed others out, he stated.

"As a result of reading the emails, I felt sick," the father told the court.

On August 12, he attended the Somerset Police Station where he made a formal complaint.

On cross-examination defence lawyer Elizabeth Christopher quizzed the father about his relationship with his daughter, which the father described as "good" at the time of the alleged sexual incidents with the defendant.

When the girl testified in court last week, she conceded her relationship with her father was "very difficult" at the time.

Ms Christopher suggested that his daughter would make it a habit of frequently staying out past her curfew and told stories.

She contended: "I'm suggesting to you that you frequently had to chase down your daughter because she was always late."

The father brushed off that suggestion.

Ms Christopher also recalled one day in the summer when the father was supposedly angry at the girl.

"I'm suggesting to you that you got angry with her and called her a conniving little b***h," she said.

"No, I didn't say that," the father responded, saying he would never use that sort of language with his daughter.

Ms Christopher then suggested the father had edited some of the emails to embellish them before turning them over to Police, which the father denied.

The day concluded with testimony from prosecution witness Detective Constable Dionne Burrows, attached to the Child Victim's Unit, of the Bermuda Police Service.

Giving very few details, Det. Con. Burrows recalled interviewing the girl as a result of her father's complaint and interviewing the defendant in a tape-recorded interview. Det. Con. Burrows' testimony is set to continue when the trial resumes today, before Puisne Judge Charles-Etta Simmons.