A man has been charged with sexually and physically abusing a teenage girl over a two-year period in the NSW Hunter region.
In January detectives from the State Crime Command's Child Abuse and Sex Crimes Squad established Strike Force Baria to investigate the alleged kidnapping, sexual and physical assault of a teenage girl between April 2016 and December 2018 by people known to her.
Two men - aged 38 and 43 - have already been charged, as well as a 60-year-old woman, for their alleged roles in the abuse of the girl. They remain before the courts.
Strike force detectives arrested a 61-year-old man at a home in Muswellbrook on Monday and took him to Waratah Police Station where he was charged with 16 sexual and physical violence-related offences.
The charges include: indecently assaulting a person under 16, causing a child older than 14 and younger than 18 to do an act of child prostitution, having sexual intercourse with person older than 14 and younger than 16, assault occasioning actual bodily harm (DV), and attempting to stalk and intimidate (DV).
Police will allege in court the man sexually and physically assaulted the girl - who was then aged between 13 and 16 - on numerous occasions between 2016 and 2018.
He was refused bail and will appear at Newcastle Local Court on Tuesday.
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