SHE is the first known victim of disgraced York psychiatrist William Kerr - claiming to have been abused by him in Ulster in the 1960s before he came to work in North Yorkshire.

Now the former patient has spoken for the first time of her ordeal, and told of her regrets that she did not have the courage to take him to court.

She said that had she done so, she might have saved scores of York and North Yorkshire women from being abused by him over subsequent decades.

"I feel so responsible for what all these women suffered," she said.

The Ulster woman, who does not wish to be identified, contacted the Belfast Telegraph to tell her story after reading recently that Kerr, of Easingwold, had died at the age of 80, following a long illness.

She claimed she had been abused when she was a 19-year-old student after being sent to see him because she was depressed.

"At the end of the session, he looked at me and asked me if I had anything to ask him," she said. "I said no and he gave me a contemptuous shrug. He said I had to go with him to his car. Like an idiot, I went."

She was too distressed to recount what happened next, but the independent report into how the NHS handled complaints against Kerr and another former York psychiatrist, which was published last year, said after they got to the car, Kerr told her sexual intercourse would help her condition, and he then had sex with her.

Within days, she lodged a complaint through her GP and a medical disciplinary investigation was launched. She said her GP had believed her. "But when I went to the police to give a statement I felt totally intimidated. I was made to feel as if I was responsible for everything.

"I was asked if I wanted to take it to court. I got the impression everything would be hushed up and I was happy to go along with that. There was such hostility to me and I decided not to go to court."

Kerr was unfit to plead at Leeds Crown Court in 2000, but he was found at a hearing-of-fact to have indecently assaulted a former patient and placed on the sex offenders' register.

The woman spoke of the courage the Yorkshire patients had had in facing Kerr in court. "If I had had that courage, then he might have been stopped 40 years ago."

Last year's report said that at least 67 women had now made allegations of "sexualised behaviour" by Kerr.

Updated: 09:23 Friday, April 21, 2006