Little girl forced to stab her mum in the head with a fork, Sydney court hears.

A man accused of terrorising a string of female partners told a little girl she needed to stab her mother in the head with a fork and to do it “harder, harder”, a Sydney court has heard.

The girl, now a 32-year-old woman, says she was sexually assaulted, hit with an electrical cord and forced to eat off the ground when she lived in the Central Coast and Hunter region with the man.

She said she did not want to stab her mother with a fork, but was scared of what would happen if she disobeyed her mum’s then-partner.

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“He told me it wasn’t hard enough and I needed to hurt her,” the woman, who can’t be named for legal reasons, said while giving evidence via video link in the District Court on Tuesday.

“I was scared of the consequences of what might happen to me or my mum.”

The 52-year-old man, who also can’t be named, is facing 21 charges relating to the alleged abuse of six women and the daughter between 1988 and 2014.

The 32-year-old woman said the man once asked her to touch a coat hanger he’d put in a bathroom power point before her mother intervened.

She also said she thought she was about five or six years old when he made her rub his penis, told her she was doing a good job, then asked if she wanted to have sex.

"I said it would hurt and what if mum found out," said the woman, who cried and had to have a break at one point during her evidence.

"He said, 'I won't tell her if you don't'."

The man is accused of raping one woman with a glass bottle and another with part of a vacuum cleaner, of tying two women up and placing them in water-filled bathtubs, and various other sadistic acts.

Defence barrister John O'Sullivan questioned why the woman's 2014 police statement did not include an allegation the man had grabbed her vagina as a child.

He also asked whether her mother had ever told her what to say about the man's alleged crimes.

The woman denied the she'd been coached by her mother and was adamant she'd been touched by the man on the genitals.

As a child, she had drawn a picture of the man touching her vagina in his bedroom during one of numerous interviews with authorities, the court heard.

The man has pleaded not guilty to 10 charges of sexual intercourse without consent, three charges of indecent assault and eight charges of detain for advantage.

He allegedly told one woman: "You're never going anywhere, you'll never escape me. I am your king, you are my slave."

The trial continues.