THE Court of Appeal was today giving judgment on a claim by retired York psychiatrist Michael Haslam that he was wrongly convicted of rape and indecent assaults against patients.

Lawyers for Haslam - jailed for seven years last year - have argued that the case against him should not have been allowed to proceed because it related to alleged events in the 1980s - so long ago as to render the trial unfair.

They said the trial at Leeds Crown Court last year was an abuse of the court process and should never have gone ahead.

The lawyers have claimed that because the case related to events so long ago, the conviction was unsafe.

They have also argued that a medical witness who gave evidence relating to the psychiatric condition of the three women complainants, and its possible impact on their reliability, had not been asked to examine them before the trial to assess their current mental health.

Prosecution lawyers have argued that the trial judge was correct in allowing the trial to proceed.

The 70-year-old doctor, of Crayke, near Easingwold, North Yorkshire, was convicted at Leeds Crown Court last year of raping a patient in a hospital photocopying room while he was working for the NHS in North Yorkshire in 1988.

He was also found guilty of indecently assaulting the same woman while administering carbon dioxide therapy, and of indecently assaulting a second woman while giving her baby oil massages.

A further conviction related to an indecent assault against a woman while treating her for sexual difficulties at York Hospital.

The woman who was assaulted while being massaged, Lila Taylor, of York, who has waived her right to anonymity, was waiting anxiously today for news of the court's decision.

She said that whichever judgement was given, she hoped it would not interfere with the forthcoming NHS inquiry.

The inquiry into the way complaints against Dr Haslam and another former York psychiatrist, William Kerr, were handled, was launched by the Health Secretary in 2001.

Oral hearings are finally due to start being held at York's Hilton Hotel next month.

Haslam worked at Clifton Hospital, York, until he left the NHS in 1989 and entered private practice. He retired in 1998.

Updated: 10:33 Thursday, May 20, 2004