A PSYCHIATRIC patient subjected a woman to a sex ordeal in her own flat, then fled when the law tried to deal with him, a court heard.

Robin Ashley Crowe, 36, persuaded the victim to give him her address and phone number at a bus stop and followed her home, Sarah Mallett, prosecuting, told York Crown Court.

There, he partially stripped his victim and sexually attacked her before she managed to get him out of her home.

Crowe left her crying and curled up on the floor.

They had initially met when both were patients at Bootham Hospital in York some months earlier.

Crowe was still resident at the hospital and attacked her when he was let out for the afternoon.

When he was due to face her in court, he travelled to Grimsby.

But a member of the public there, believing him to be the man behind a sex attack on an eight-year-old girl in Skegness featured in a regional television programme, alerted officers and he was arrested.

Humberside Police ruled him out of the Lincolnshire attack, but discovered through police national computer checks that he was wanted in York.

In his absence, a York jury had decided he was responsible for the attack on the local woman, and Judge John Bullimore had issued a warrant for his arrest.

Humberside Police sent him back to the court, where the judge made a six-week hospital order.

Under it, Crowe will be confined to the low security psychiatric unit at Clifton House, Clifton, while psychiatrists decide if he should have special restrictions placed on him.

These would prevent doctors releasing him into the community without the Home Secretary's approval.

Crowe, of Bull Lane, off Hull Road, York, was charged with two sexual assaults on the woman.

At an earlier hearing, a jury heard psychiatrists give evidence and decided he was mentally unfit to plead.

He should then have attended a trial under the Mental Health Act, but skipped bail.

The woman did attend and told a second jury what he had done.

When he returns to court in September, the judge is expected to make a long-term order confining him to a psychiatric hospital until he is fit to stand at a criminal trial.

At the York trial, Miss Mallett told the jury that the woman did not want to give Crowe her personal details at the bus stop and mentally resolved not to answer the phone or door if he called.

But when the doorbell rang 30 minutes after she arrived home, she answered it because she was expecting a parcel to be delivered.

The woman felt obliged to let him in.

To her relief, he invited her to a pub for a drink, but then took her back home, kissed her against her wishes and sexually attacked her.

Crowe later told police he had seduced her and that he thought she had enjoyed his actions.

Updated: 12:39 Saturday, August 13, 2005