Former Afghan interpreter details alleged sexual abuse by Global Affairs employee

Clutching a teddy bear and trembling through her story in the witness box, a female former Afghan interpreter who worked for Canada in Afghanistan detailed the harrowing sexual abuse she allegedly suffered at the hands of a Canadian government employee.

For four days this week, the woman, whose identity is protected by a publication ban, recounted to an Ottawa courtroom how the alleged abuse started when she was 17, shortly after moving to Canada in October 2011, and went on until 2013.

"He called me his sex toy, a whore and a bitch," the woman said of her alleged attacker, whose family she was living with during some of the alleged abuse.

Isolated, thousands of miles away from her family in Kandahar, she said she couldn't draw on support from her mother, father, siblings or friends. Coming from an honour culture, she said, meant that if word of the alleged abuse reached her father there would be dire consequences.