After more than two months of sitting in court listening to the case against her, a Whitehorse woman accused of murder took the stand in her defence Wednesday.

Christina Asp was the first witness to be called by the defence in her first-degree murder trial.

Dressed in jeans and a black shirt, Asp spent most of the afternoon's testimony describing a troubled childhood. Her experiences included multiple sexual assaults, prostitution, drugs and alcohol by the time she was 12 years old.

The 34-year old stands accused of killing Gorden Seybold, whose body was found inside the remains of his Ibex Valley cabin which burned to the ground in March 2008.

Nearly a year later, Asp was the target of an in-depth undercover police investigation dubbed Project Monsoon.

Undercover police officers posing as members of a powerful crime family welcomed Asp into the faux crime syndicate.

For months, she travelled around the country working for the family and telling her new friends about the early-morning hours when Seybold died.

The jury has heard multiple recordings of Asp talking about what she said happened, including some recordings during trips back to the Yukon to help "clean up” evidence.

On the recordings, Asp tells her new friends that she and her boyfriend, Norman Larue, went to Seybold's cabin and the two men got into a fight.

When it appeared Seybold was getting the upper hand, Asp tells the undercover officers, she took a bat and hit Seybold three times in the head.

Larue is also facing a first-degree murder charge.

Her lawyer, Ken Tessovitch, has repeatedly questioned the officers' techniques in this case. They included buying Asp gifts, putting her up in nice hotel rooms, taking her out to restaurants and paying her rent.

He has gone so far as to compare it to brainwashing.

Asp continued her testimony today.

Yesterday afternoon she told the jury of 12 women and two men that she grew up in a dysfunctional Yukon household with an alcoholic mother and a father with strict religious beliefs.

Henry Asp, who followed the Branimite religion, taught that "God was a punishing God,” she testified. "He was a God that was not a loving God.”

Girls were required to wear long dresses covering most of their bodies and attend prayer meetings.

They could not cut their hair nor get tattoos.

Asp, who now sports a short haircut and has multiple visible tattoos, testified that living in the house made her feel like she "always had to please somebody, or I was walking on eggshells or something.”

Asp told the court that she was sexually assaulted four times by different people when she was between the ages of six and 12.

She told her mother about some of the attacks but nothing was done, she testified.

When she was 16 years old, Asp was raped by a family member. That man was convicted and sentenced to a year in jail.

The repeated sexual assaults led to Asp becoming suicidal and struggling with eating disorders and self-harm.

"I just didn't think I was good enough for anything or anyone,” she testified.

At 12 years old, Asp discovered that Henry Asp was not her biological father and ran away from home.

While living on the streets, the young Asp began working in prostitution. This continued for three years on "a regular basis,” she said.

Prostitution taught her "how to use people, take things from people,” she told the court, adding, "I could be whoever they wanted me to be.”

An admitted alcoholic and crack cocaine addict, Asp said, she was using drugs and drinking in 2008, the year Seybold died.

Asp first met Larue in 2007, when both were in Vancouver on parole and living in separate half-way houses.

"I was totally head-over-heels, crazy in love with him,” she testified.

Soon after meeting, when the pair went out drinking and failed to check into their homes, Asp and Larue went on the run and took a bus from Vancouver to Whitehorse.

The Yukon Supreme Court trial is being heard in front of Justice Leigh Gower.