Testifying in person at the sex-assault trial of her father would have had a traumatic impact on an already emotionally scarred city girl, her child welfare worker said yesterday.

Elisa Mayer said the girl, who is under the permanent guardianship of children's services, has already endured the suicide of her sister and being removed from her family.

Mayer, called as a witness in a hearing to determine if the girl could testify via video, said just briefly seeing her father on Wednesday reduced the girl to tears.

"She is emotionally attached to him," Mayer said during a Crown application to permit the girl, a defence witness, to re-main out of the courtroom.

Defence lawyers Jim Lutz and Alias Sanders opposed the application by the prosecution to have their witness give evidence from a remote location.

Justice John Rooke, in allowing prosecutor Mac Vomberg's application, ruled permitting the video-link testimony wouldn't interfere with the administration of justice.

In her evidence, the girl told Lutz that life with her father and the half-sisters accusing him of abuse was good. She also contradicted her eldest sibling's claim she discussed being abused with the witness.

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