Geraldton doctor murder trial: Chamari Liyanage says husband beat her, forced her into online sex acts.

BY Bonnie Christian

A woman on trial for the murder of her husband has told a court how he made her perform sexual acts for strangers online in the months leading up to his death.

Chamari Liyanage is on trial in the Western Australia Supreme Court accused of murdering her husband Dinendra Athukorala with a mallet while he slept at their home in Geraldton, 400 kilometres north of Perth, in June 2014.

Liyanage, 35, told the jury her husband would stay up until the early hours of the morning monitoring chat rooms and child pornography websites on three laptops.

She told the jury he would direct her to perform sex acts while he streamed live video of her online.

Under cross-examination, defence lawyer George Guidice gave Liyanage a series of pornographic images, including of children, and asked whether she had seen them before.

She replied she had seen “thousands of images showing this kind of material”.

Liyanage told the jury Dr Athukorala, 34, became paranoid, irritable and more controlling in the months leading up to his death.

“It became constant beatings, constant teaching sessions, he kept me sitting on the bed or kept me on camera and [had me] perform for people online. People would ask me to get undressed or do sexual acts,” Liyanage said.

“He got more and more interested in children, younger and younger children.

“He would constantly be downloading and chatting on websites trying to find women. If I had shown I was not interested, he would get extremely angry.”

Mr Guidice asked Liyanage when she would find the time to sleep.

“I got four or five hours of interrupted sleep a night,” she said.

“I was so exhausted I don’t think I had a continuous night’s sleep until I got to Geraldton Police Station (after she was arrested by police).

“That was the first time in many, many months I had a peaceful night sleep, in the interview room at the Geraldton police station.”

Mr Guidice asked Liyanage whether she ever thought of harming her husband.

“Never, no matter how much he did to me. I loved him,” she said.

“I remembered him in the first few months in 2009 [of our relationship], he was so calm, such a gentle person. I knew he could be like that and I just thought he could change.

“I wanted him to become a better person, or I wanted to become strong enough to leave again or I really wanted to kill myself.”

Liyanage said her husband constantly threatened her and her family, and at one point mentioned hiring someone to throw acid over her or her sister.

“He said if I made a mistake like telling about the beatings or child pornography he would do things to me, he would make me suffer for a very long time,” she said.

She said on a number of occasions she had thought about taking, or had attempted to take her own life, but her husband’s threats against her family stopped her from doing so.

“Why didn’t you go to police or colleagues?” Mr Guidice asked.

“What would I tell them?” she replied.

“If Din went to jail he would get out and he would come and find me. So for the rest of my life I would be so scared something would happen to myself or my family.

“I didn’t want to burden anyone else. I’m scared he would try post their numbers on sex websites and would threaten them. I couldn’t risk that.”

Liyanage told the court on Monday how Dr Athukorala posted her mobile number on an online sex site in Sri Lanka in a bid to get her to sleep with other people.

Liyanage has pleaded not guilty to murder.

The trial is in its third and final week.

This post originally appeared on ABC News.