A Northern Ireland-based teenager is due to make history today by giving live satellite evidence in a Florida sex-abuse trial of an anti-abortion extremist.
The 16-year-old is expected to be the first person to give live testimony under a criminal law assistance treaty signed between the US and the UK.
The alleged victim has accused Mr John Burt of trying to sexually abuse her at a home for troubled teenagers in south Florida.
Prosecutors are trying 66-year- old Mr Burt on four counts of lewd and lascivious molestation and one count of lewd and lascivious conduct. Mr Burt was previously known to the US media for supporting the murder of abortion doctors and has numerous convictions for invading abortion clinics.
He was a close friend of Paul Hill, who was executed last year for murdering an abortion doctor and his bodyguard.
Mr Burt, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan, is alleged to have tried to start a sexual relationship with the girl while she stayed at a home he established for troubled teenage girls in Milton, Florida.
The alleged victim fled to her mother's family in Northern Ireland and had refused to return to Florida to give evidence. The court in Santa Rose County initially planned to fly Mr Burt and his lawyer to Belfast to cross-examine the witness.
However, prosecutors told the court that, because of his criminal record, it was unlikely that Mr Burt would be allowed into the UK to hear the evidence.
The trial had to be delayed to allow the live testimony section of the US-UK criminal assistance treaty to come into effect on March 1st.
A spokeswoman for assistant state attorney Mr Harmon Massey said that the alleged victim would be the first witness for the prosecution and that prosecutors hoped to take her evidence today.