KINGSTON, Ont. - An Afghan woman living in Montreal would not leave home or go to police for fear her abusive husband would kill her, an Ontario murder trial heard Tuesday.

In her testimony, Fahimah Vorgetts testified how Rona Amir Mohammad grew increasingly desperate in the year before she was found drowned along with her husband's three teen daughters.

"Almost every time she called, she would be crying and crying," Vorgetts testified.

"She said that if she leaves the house, if she goes to the police, her husband would kill her."

Vorgetts, an Afghan women's rights activist who now lives in Virginia, said she tried to persuade Mohammad to leave her husband Mohammad Shafia, who is now a co-accused in the four drowning deaths.

But in a series of furtive payphone calls, Mohammad said she had no status in Canada, had no documents because her husband kept them all, and worried about being sent back to Afghanistan where his relatives would kill her.

"She did not want her family name to be tainted by her actions," Vorgetts said.

"I did say, 'You're not in Afghanistan; the law here will protect you'."

Calling from a park payphone because she could not call from home, Mohammad told Vorgetts that Shafia had kicked her and pulled her hair.

She also talked about how Shafia's second wife, Tooba Yahya, would humiliate her constantly in front of the children and guests, Ontario Superior Court heard.

"You are no wife. You are a slave. You are a servant," Yahya would tell Mohammad, Vorgetts testified.

Under cross-examination, Vorgetts said she took no steps herself to call police, saying that it was Mohammad's decision to make, not hers.

In May 2009, Vorgetts returned from a trip to Afghanistan to find messages from Mohammad on her answering machine.

"They were desperate messages. It sounded like she was in big trouble. It sounded like she needed big help now. It sounded like she wanted to do something," she said.

"Then, I heard that she was dead."

On June 30, 2009, Mohammad, 52, was found in a black Nissan Sentra submerged in a canal just outside Kingston, Ont. With her were the bodies of Geeti, 13, Sahar, 17, and Zainab Shafia, 19.

Shafia, 58, an Afghan businessman, Yahya, 41, the mother of the dead girls, and their son Hamed, 20, have pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in four drownings.

The prosecution alleges the accused killed the girls because they were dishonouring the family with what he considered a permissive lifestyle.

The accused have cast the drownings as an accident.

Earlier in the day, Mohammad's youngest sister who came from France to testify, said all she wanted was justice to be done.

Speaking through an interpreter, Diba Abdaili Masoomi testified how her sister's marriage and relationship to Shafia was good in the beginning.

It deteriorated because she could not have children and he took on Yahya as his second wife, she said.

Like Vorgetts, Masoomi told the seven-woman, five-man jury of an increasingly abusive relationship relayed in phone calls from Montreal and escalating death threats against her and the daughters Shafia viewed as wayward.

Masoomi admitted under cross-examination she never told anyone about the distressed calls, saying she didn't believe anything like that could happen in Canada.

"In Afghanistan anything can happen. There is no law in Afghanistan. The women and children are dying," Masoomi testified.

"This is Canada. It's a developed country. Nothing like this will happen."

14:23ET 29-11-11