The wife of an accused man said she never saw anything wrong between her husband and some of neighbourhood's children.

(SHANNON QUESNEL / iNFOnews.ca)

The wife of a man accused of sexual assault said she saw nothing strange between her husband and some of the neighbourhood's children.

Rose Johnson is the wife of Kenneth Johnson, 65, a former Osoyoos resident who stands accused of sexually assaulting a woman from when she was 13 to when she was 21 years of age. He pled not guilty in Penticton Supreme Court on Tuesday to charges of sexual assault, sexual interference with a person under 14 and touching a young person for sexual purpose.

Rose testified she never saw anything inappropriate between her husband and the complainant, now a young woman who cannot be named due to a publication ban.

Rose explained she and her husband treated some of the neighbourhood kids as their own children. They would often play games with some of them. Rose remembers Kenneth playing cribbage and the boardgame Life with the complainant.

Kenneth and Rose would use the phrase, "My girls," to describe the complainant and several other girls. "They were like family."

Yesterday the complainant testified she was pushed into sex with the accused "countless times." The victim alleges this went on for about 10 years and continued even after she was pregnant with another man's child, when she was married and when she lived in her own apartment.

The complainant also said Kenneth had sex with her near the shoreline of a lake in Osoyoos. But Rose said it was easy to see people along the shore from where she worked in town. She once saw some fruit pickers washing themselves in the lake.

Prosecutor Deb Drissell said Rose would have not seen anything at night.

Rose said she trusted her husband. The two have been married for 26 years and she never saw any "improper things."

Drissell asked Rose about her then 51-year-old husband spending time with 10-year-old girls.

"I had no concerns," Rose said.

The complainant said yesterday, when she was younger, she had sex with Kenneth while at his home. Drissell said if Rose was working late she would not have known what was going on at her house.

"It's possible," Rose said.

The case resumes tomorrow.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Shannon Quesnel at squesnel@infotelnews.ca, call/text 250-488-3065 or send him a tweet at @shannonquesnel1

News from © iNFOnews, 2013