A judge has outlined to a jury two different ways it might view serious allegations against retired York psychiatrist William Kerr.

Judge Arthur Myerson QC said it might take the prosecution view that the 16 patients who alleged Dr Kerr had abused them were responsible, sensible people of mature years, with no apparent axe to grind against the former consultant.

"They came forward with considerable embarrassment and pain to bear witness to what can be described as a traumatic event."

Or the jury might take the defence view that all the women, save three, had suffered from illnesses of the mind and that the majority were still suffering, and that for particular reasons none of the complainant's evidence could be accepted.

He said the defence argued that Dr Kerr would have run enormous risks to have carried out such acts. "The prosecution say the risk was part of the excitement."

Judge Myerson was summing up on the 13th day of a special hearing of fact at Leeds Crown Court, at which the jury is seeking to determine whether Dr Kerr carried out four rapes and 15 indecent assaults against women patients in North Yorkshire between 1968 and his retirement in 1988.

A previous jury decided earlier this year that Dr Kerr was unfit to plead because of mental impairment.

Judge Myerson went through the evidence relating to each of the 16 complainants.

He spoke of one woman who claimed Dr Kerr had raped her on a rug in front of a fire at his office in Clifton Hospital, York, as well as carrying out other sexual acts on other occasions in the 1980s.

He said she alleged that not only had Dr Kerr abused her, he had also demanded £25 for each session.

But the defence had argued that such a woman of self-confidence and means, and not afraid of saying when doctors were not up to the job, would not have acceded to demands for sex for so many years without complaint.

The judge is expected to send the jury out today after completing his summing up.