A girl has given graphic evidence of the alleged abuse she and two of her sisters suffered at the hands of their father.

In the High Court at Wellington today a jury has seen a recording of an interview with the girl from February last year at Porirua police station. She was aged eight at the time.

The girl is one eight children allegedly treated cruelly by their parents. The mother, 42, and father, 55, are now on trial along with a drinking companion known to the children as an uncle. All three are charged with sexual offences and the two men are also charged with assaults.

The oldest of the children was allegedly sexually abused. However the two girls the jury has already heard from have had varying accounts of what happened.

As a result of one girl changing her mind and agreeing that she had made up an allegation, a 39-year-old man has been discharged on the three sex charges he faced. The girl, now 13, said she had lied about him because he was an idiot to her.

The jury is watching recordings of police and social welfare interviews with the children last year and defence lawyers cross-examine the children via closed circuit television.

In court this morning a recording was played in which the third girl said that when she was seven her father had wanted to kill her and two of her sisters and used a knife on their genitals.

People wanted to kill them with the knife, she said.

She also said that the "uncle" had sex with her in the bath and her mother put beer on the girl’s genitals.

In a second interview recorded in July the girl accused four of her half-sister’s of sexually assaulting the younger members of the family.

Nobody else had done anything like that to her, she agreed.

She said she was told about some of the things and did not see them herself.

In the live cross-examination she agreed that she was repeating things she had heard her older siblings talking about.

The trial is in its second week.

- © Fairfax NZ News