A young Butler native recalls 49-year-old Ronald Morgan as just about always toting at least one camera, sometimes up to three at a time.

The girl, now 17, on Monday told a Butler County jury that when she was younger, Morgan used those cameras to memorialize her when she got a new outfit, when she was spending time with her friends and during a four-year course of escalating sexual assaults on her.

Morgan, who denies all of the girl’s allegations, is on trial for multiple charges including involuntary deviate sexual assault and aggravated indecent assault as well as making and owning child pornography.

Some of the alleged photographs are expected to be shown to the jury during the next day or two.

Assistant District Attorney B.T. Fullerton, prosecuting the case, told the jury that they would see some of those images.

But defense attorney William E. Stockey of Pittsburgh told the jury that nothing they would see corroborates the girl’s story, which he urged the 11-man, 1 woman jury to question.

The girl, who has since moved out of Butler County, was the first witness to testify Monday.

She told the jury that Morgan, who had been a longtime trusted friend to her mother, took a special interest in her when she was in the 6th grade.

At first, the girl said, “he was nice.”

Morgan bought her numerous gifts, including clothes, cameras, a computer and about five cellular telephones. He took her to the drive-in theater as well as quad riding and shopping.

Additionally, Morgan also took her on overnight visits to his own home in the North Hills neighborhood of Allegheny County, on trips to his camp in the Tionesta area, on vacations, or to see three Justin Beiber concerts.

On one of those trips, the girl testified, her relationship with Morgan changed when he crawled naked into the same hotel room bed with her.

Soon, the girl alleges, Morgan started rubbing her body.

Later, she said, Morgan used vibrators that he kept in what she coined the “toy drawer” of his home to touch her.

Then even later, the assaults progressed to intercourse, she testified.

“He forced himself on me. He’s a big guy. I was 12,” the girl testified, noting that she would ask him to stop assaulting her. She said sometimes he would stop, “but he would be mad.”

The girl said the abuse progressed for four years. She initially kept it to herself because she was scared and didn’t know what to say or to whom.

The girl claims the assaults ended in April 2011, when she told her father.

During different times in her testimony, the girl became emotional or openly sobbed. One of those points was on questioning by the defense attorney on why she waited to report the alleged activities to her parents.

She retorted: “If that happened to you, would you go home and tell your parents? Would you be brave enough?”

The girl’s mother was the second person to testify, telling the jury that she trusted Morgan to care for her daughter overnight because they had been friends for more than 15 years, and he had helped her and her family out many times. The mother acknowledged that she was overwhelmed by life’s circumstances at the time of the alleged assaults and did not know anything was amiss until her daughter made her disclosure.

Butler County Judge William Shaffer is presiding over the trial, which is expected to continue another day or two.