Her voice came across small and almost inaudible, but the 12-year-old girl who took the stand Monday as the first witness against a preacher charged with child molestation did not hesitate for a second.

"Tom" did it, the girl said, when Deputy District Attorney Kimberly Macy asked her who crept into her bedroom and touched her in a bad way while she napped six years ago in the home of the soon-to-be pastor of the Rio Linda First Baptist Church.

Some details have varied from account to account to her testimony in Sacramento Superior Court, but the focus of the girl's accusation for six years has remained squarely on Tommy Gene Daniels, the 49-year-old pastor named in a 12-count complaint as having molested five girls.

The girl told her father she was molested the night it allegedly took place, July 5, 2005. Then she told her mother the same story. They took her to the hospital that night and medical personnel reported the case to police. Investigators questioned her the same evening and she told them the same story. She also identified Daniels by his DMV photo as the man who molested her.

Twice, she said, Daniels reached into her private areas and touched her while she was waking up from a nap at the pastor's Citrus Heights house where his wife offered day care and foster care services, even though her license had been revoked.

She said she kept her eyes closed to make her molester think she was asleep. She said she knew it was Daniels by the sound of his voice when he called her name to wake her up and by the feel of his hands when he shook and molested her. But she said she never opened her eyes to look at him, before he left the bedroom where she had slept.

"He gave up, I'm guessing, and left, and I went back to sleep," the girl testified.

Defense attorney Michael L. Chastaine, in his opening statement to the jury, described Daniels as "a good man. He's a good husband, a good father, a good member of this community," a veteran, a man of religion.

Chastaine branded the other four alleged victims expected to testify in the trial before Judge Trena H. Burger-Plavan as "liars." He said they're on medications that distort their perception of reality. Their timetables of molestation don't add up, Chastaine said. In court papers, he said they've also raised suggestions of sexual improprieties against each other.

According to Chastaine, the four older girls had all been placed to live in the Daniels' home to give their parents a break from handling the problematic children – "respite" care is what they called it.

The "common denominator" among the four girls, Chastaine said, was a psychotherapist who treated them all in 2010 and reported their allegations of sexual molestation against Daniels to Citrus Heights police.

Chastaine said the girls didn't want to be placed in the Daniels home, didn't like it there, didn't like him, and when the opportunity arose, they falsely accused him.

"What better way to get back at somebody you don't like than to put them in that chair?" Chastaine asked the jury, pointing to his client seated at the defense table.

Citrus Heights police arrested Daniels last Dec. 9 and his bail was once set as high as $6 million. It's now $4.5 million.

There was no such "respite" circumstance surrounding the girl who testified Monday. Her parents were a working couple raising three kids. They had been using Daniels' wife, Brenda, for child care services as far back as 2002. They stuck with the Daniels' residence on Wapiti Place even after the state revoked his wife's child and foster care licenses the next year for violations such as lack of supervision and a charge – denied by Tommy Daniels – that he "would be ready" with his guns for any social workers who came to check up on him, according to papers filed by his lawyer.

"My children were happy there, and we trusted them," the girl's mother testified.

Not after July 5, 2005, the she also testified.

"I didn't quite know how to react," when she first heard the allegation, the mother said. "I couldn't believe it. I didn't want to believe it."

The mother said she took her girl to the hospital that night. Medical personnel called police, and authorities took the girl to UC Davis Medical Center, where an examination showed vaginal redness. A physician's assistant testified Monday that the markings were inconclusive on the question of molestation.

Citrus Heights police first arrested Daniels in 2005 but no charges were filed then.

After authorities announced the charges against Daniels late last year, the Rio Linda First Baptist Church church released a statement saying "we have an obligation to support him and his family."

Nobody at the church was available for comment late Monday afternoon to respond whether the congregation still supports the pastor.

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