A car wash manager lured a 16-year-old girl to work for him with the promise of up to $500 a day and later forced her to have sex with him and take nude photographs, a court has heard.
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James William Rao, 60, stands trial in the Perth District Court accused of sexually abusing two teenagers, who worked as chamois girls at his family's car wash in Edgewater in 2009.
The now 18-year-old women both accused Rao of inappropriately touching them and one woman has testified he forced her to give him oral sex at his Joondalup home and held her there against her will.
The other woman yesterday told the court how she had called Rao "Hugh Hefner" when he asked her to be his girlfriend.
Rao has denied the allegations but has already pleaded guilty to 30 sexual assault charges that involved nine of his former employees.
One of those employees was a 16-year-old girl who yesterday testified Rao had become "grumpy" when she tried to refuse his advances.
The girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was 15 years old when Rao approached her with the offer of work while she was at the car wash with a male friend.
She said although her friend also wanted work, Rao told her he "only wanted girls working there".
"[He said] If you start working there you will see what the family is and what happens at the car wash stays at the car wash," she told the court.
She said she used to earn $100 a day "just for sitting around" but after two weeks he started getting closer and touching her legs.
"Every time [he did that], he said that I was going to be on a trial, on a test of how far he could trust me, how far into the family I could be," she said.
She said he made her quit her work with at a fast food restaurant because he promised her extra money at the car wash.
After she quit, he showed her photographs of other girls he employed who were "part of the family".
One girl was photographed in a bikini at the beach, she said.
On another day he took her up to the roof of the car wash to show her where the girls liked to sunbathe and as he did so, he roped off a cage door that prevented her getting down the ladder, she testified.
She said he laid down a mattress kept on the roof and took her clothes off.
"He got a bit grumpy when I didn't want to do anything... He said the other girls did it and I was meant to be part of the family," she said.
After he had sex with her he went to buy her cigarettes and she got her mother to collect her.
She said she did not intend going back to work but she lived with her boyfriend and brothers, after their mother moved out, and was responsible for paying the rent.
"Me and my boyfriend needed money. I had to go back because I didn't have the job at maccas [any more]," she said.
"...I thought if it happened once it would never happen again."
But not long afterwards he told her "he just wanted to take photographs", she said.
"He said I could do a modeling job with topless photos... He said I would get extra money," she told the court.
He took photographs of the upper half of her body but she did not get paid for them.
He again forced her to have sex on a mattress on the office floor by pushing her back and talking to her in an "angry" voice, she said.
When cross-examined by Rao's defence lawyer Belinda Lonsdale about why she had given in to him.
"He's a grown man. I was 15. How was I meant to push a grown man away from me," she said.
She denied agreeing to have sex for money.
"I wouldn't do anything if I was desperate for money, I wasn't like that... I didn't agree. I wouldn't agree to something like that," she said.
The trial continues today.
