A husband and wife from Aalborg, aged 33 and 34 respectively, have been charged with sexually abusing four girls – including their own daughter – between the ages of 12 and 14 years old.

The court in the northern Jutland has set aside nine days to hear the case of the couple.

The details of the accusations in the case are ugly.

The mother is accused of tying up two of the girls, hanging them in the air by their legs and then watching as the father raped them.

Another girl was said to have been raped multiple times by the father, who threatened her with violence if she did not comply with his demands. On another occasion, the prosecution alleged that the father held the same victim in a stranglehold while she was abused sexually by the mother.

The charges also state that on a night in March 2011, one of the girls was sexually abused by the mother and a male acquaintance of the father while the father made a video of the assault.

"This is an ugly case,” prosecutor Michael Møller Hansen, who is seeking an eight year prison sentence for the couple, told Jyllands-Posten newspaper. “Reading the indictment, even a layman could see that these are very serious offences.”

The assaults all occurred in the couple’s east Aalborg home. They are charged with multiple accounts of raped, assault and indecent exposure.