Repeated sex assaults over two years by her cousin?s husband led a schoolgirl to contemplate suicide and stay away from home at night a Supreme Court jury heard yesterday.

?It happen,? the now 20-year-old sobbed on the stand. ?If it didn?t, I wouldn?t have wanted to kill myself. He took away my pride. I wouldn?t have wanted to hide myself away from everybody.?

?He was controlling me. Everybody was happy. I didn?t want to mess it up,? she said of life in her grandmother?s home with her cousin and her husband and their three children. ?He told me to play it cool. So that?s what I did.

?He told me his wife didn?t like sex as much as he does,? she said. ?He tried to stick his tongue down my throat.?

She said she pushed him away but he grabbed hold of her. The woman described the man first flirting with her in 1999.

The 29-year-old man denies five counts of sexually assault under Section 323 of the Criminal Code sometime in July of 2000 ? when she was 15 ? and one count of sexual assault on April 25, 2002.

Crown counsel Graveney Bannister is prosecuting before Puisne Justice Charles-Etta Simmons.

?He asked if I liked to have my private parts ?eaten? and I said no,? she said. ?He said my cousin liked it and so will I.?

Defence lawyer Peter Farge asked the girl if his client had just finished work before he came to her home on the day of the alleged assault on July 29, 2000. ?Had he just finished work at Sonesta?? Mr. Farge asked. ?Was he wearing a blue uniform??

But she thought he was not wearing a uniform and was wearing ?normal clothes?.

On the day of the alleged assault in 2002, her high-school English teacher who had been told of the assaults by another student, went to check up on her at her home.

The teacher and her student went for a walk on a beach where the girl said she had just been assaulted. But despite the girl?s revelations, the teacher took her back home, the ten-woman two man jury heard.

The defendant and his family moved out a few days after Police were contacted, she said. Mr. Farge asked her why she did not move away, but she said only felt safe when she slept in the same bed as her grandmother.