MURRIETA – A former Menifee resident molested a female relative from the time she was 6 until she turned 12, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday, but the defendant's attorney said the girl was sexually curious and made up stories about the man.

Charles James Lockhart, 49, went on trial Wednesday on eight counts of committing a lewd act on a child under 14 and one count of aggravated sexual assault of a child.

He faces 29 years to life if convicted, according to Deputy District Attorney Burke Strunsky.

The molestation began in 1988, when the girl was 5 or 6 years old, according to a declaration submitted by sheriff's Detective Darin Gray in support of an arrest warrant.

The alleged victim came forward in November 2006 – she is now a married woman of 25 with two young children – and Lockhart has been in custody since then in lieu of $1 million bail.

Strunsky said in his opening statement that Lockhart used his young relative as a “sexual outlet” in place of his wife, who would not sleep with him and eventually left him.

“You're going to hear him trying to justify” himself, Strunsky told the panel.

Defense attorney Gerald Smith countered that the little girl was very sexually curious and constantly hid in the defendant's closet to watch him touch himself.

Smith said his client caught the child watching a “soft porn” tape he had hidden away. And though Lockhart would lock himself in his room to read Playboy magazine and masturbate, the girl found ways to get into the room, the defense attorney said.

“Her curiosity was also piqued, and she asked questions,” he said.

Smith denied his client inappropriately touched the child, telling jurors that she made up the allegations and embellished her story as the years went on.

The defense attorney said the defendant chose to explain sexuality to the girl to protect her from becoming sexually active too soon and ruining her life.

The prosecution's first witness was the alleged victim, who testified that she remembered watching pornographic movies while sitting on the defendant's lap. He would touch her and have her touch and kiss his privates, she said.

When she was 12, she said, she decided it needed to stop.

“At that time I knew it was wrong, and I put an end to it,” the woman said as she dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

Strunsky played a recording of a telephone call the woman made to the defendant on Nov. 6, 2006, as police detectives listened in.

During the hourlong recording, the defendant admitted touching her when she was a young girl and reminded her of how she admitted watching him touch himself many times, though he contended it went on for a year and a half as opposed to six years.

“You told me that you had been watching me for a long, long time ... when I was having my private time,” Lockhart says. “(I) showed you how it was done. You came and asked me to do it again.” Lockhart went on to say that he wanted to stop, but was afraid she would feel “rejected” and also that it brought them closer together.

He also said he needed a sexual outlet because his wife not touch him because she thought he had genital warts.

“I never meant to harm you,” he says on the tape. “I screwed up. It was never an aggressive attack.”