A WOMAN claimed today that a York psychiatrist stripped her naked before massaging her with baby oil and then indecently assaulting her.

The York woman, who is in her fifties, told a jury at Leeds Crown Court that Michael Haslam carried out the attack in his consulting room at the former Clifton Hospital in 1981.

She said: "Doctor Haslam raised it as something that could help me to relax, because I was quite an anxious individual.

"I wasn't sure it was a good idea. I tried to think that Dr Haslam was trying to help me."

The woman, now in her fifties, said he asked her to lie completely naked on a coach after undressing her.

"He was rubbing baby oil on his hands and rubbing it onto me. I was finding it very difficult to relax. He started caressing my breasts and went down to my genital area."

She said she felt quite numb afterwards.

"I was trying to think Dr Haslam was trying to do something to help me," she said.

She said she went back to see him a fortnight later and was again massaged and indecently assaulted. Asked why she went back for a second time, she said: "Because I was trying to believe he was doing something to try and help me."

She said she was been treated by Dr Haslam because of depression caused by bereavement and other crises in her life.

Yesterday, the jury heard that a patient tried to kill herself after being raped in a York hospital.

She drove to Strensall Common and cut her wrist, it was alleged.

On an earlier occasion, the woman fell unconscious after Haslam persuaded her to breathe in carbon dioxide to help her relax - and then awoke to find him spreadeagled on her, said Paul Worsley QC, prosecuting.

Another woman was indecently assaulted by Haslam at his York District Hospital clinic after seeking help for sexual difficulties, he said.

The doctor allegedly then warned the woman: "If you tell anyone, I will make sure your reputation is ruined."

A third woman was given a massage with baby oil to "help her relax" before the doctor went on to caress her private parts, the jury was told.

Mr Worsley said the women were vulnerable patients who felt "unclean, ashamed and humiliated" after the attacks.

"They felt they wouldn't be believed if they spoke out against a consultant psychiatrist and felt they couldn't go through the ordeal of giving evidence against him," he said.

The court heard that one of the women claimed Haslam had a toupee which slipped forward during an alleged attack.

But Haslam told police he did not wear a toupee. He had a woven hairpiece which could not slip in the way she claimed.

Haslam, 69, of Crayke, near Easingwold, who is now retired, denies four indecent assaults and one rape.

Two of the indecent assaults, involving the massage, were alleged to have happened at the former Clifton Hospital in 1981. The district hospital assault is alleged to have happened in the same year.

The rape is alleged to have happened in a photocopying room at Clifton in 1988, while the other indecent assault was allegedly carried out at Bootham Park Hospital in the same year.

When interviewed by police, Haslam said he had never "touched this lady with lust in my heart - ever."

The jury of seven men and five women were warned by the judge before the trial started to ignore any publicity they might have seen previously.

Mr Worsley said Haslam had worked at Clifton Hospital in York up until 1989. He also ran clinics at Bootham Park Hospital and at Harrogate, and also a clinic at the district hospoital specialising in psycho-sexual and marital problems, on which he had also published work.

He said it was possible Haslam had got excitement out of the danger created in committing the offences.

He said that when interviewed by police, Haslam had denied all the allegations, but confirmed that he had given massages to patients to relax them.

The trial was continuing today.

Updated: 14:23 Thursday, November 13, 2003