THE Parole Board's decision to keep blind prisoner Yvonne Sleightholme locked up was based partly on old reports dating back more than two years.

The Evening Press has obtained copies of official reports by experts which the board took into account last autumn before refusing Sleightholme's application for transfer to an open jail.

Many date back to early 2000. A report by a psychologist is dated March 16, 2000; one by a field probation officer is dated March 24; and another by a prison probation officer dates back to March 22; Another report, by a governor, is undated, but the most recent events he refers to in the document took place in 1999.

Sleightholme's supporters, Margaret Leonard and David Hamilton, claimed today that the documents reveal the Parole Board should have considered her application in 2000, but for some reason never did so.

Sleightholme was jailed in 1991 for shooting dead a Ryedale farmer's wife, but has always protested her innocence. Her trial judge recommended she serve ten years, but she remains at a medium-security jail following the Parole Board decision.

The board is now to review that decision, in the wake of Evening Press revelations that it blundered by failing to realise she had successfully completed a vital Enhanced Thinking Skills course last August.

The review will probably not be completed until October and Sleightholme's supporters, who for years have been trying to establish her innocence, are unhappy it will take so long.

"To delay the new review until October seems to compound the defects of the review system in this case," they said in a joint statement.

They also responded to references by Parole Board chief executive Chris Glenn to a need to identify further issues relating to anger management.

"Can the chief executive explain what these issues are? They are not explained in the correspondence dated 9 October 2002, in which Yvonne was informed of the Parole Board decision, and there is nothing in any report - or in Yvonne's behaviour before or since the offence, which she denies - to suggest that anger is a problem for her, and a great deal to suggest that it is not."

Updated: 10:23 Saturday, April 12, 2003