FORMER York psychiatrist Michael Haslam revealed today he was still fighting to clear his name - more than two years after being jailed for indecently assaulting former patients.

He said he was waiting for the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) to consider a fresh application to go back to the Court of Appeal.

He claimed his trial had been an abuse of process and should never have taken place, as it was based on historic allegations dating back to the early 1980s. And he insisted: "I am wholly innocent."

Haslam, of Crayke, near Easingwold, who was released from prison in June, went to the Court of Appeal in June last year after being convicted in late 2003 of four indecent assaults and one rape.

His rape conviction was quashed but the four indecent assault convictions were upheld by the court.

He told the Evening Press today that he had applied to the CCRC to review his case after that decision, but the application was stuck in a queue.

"They have said it will probably be considered in the autumn, but one can never be sure," he said. "It is very frustrating."

He also criticised the official report, published last month, into the way the NHS handled complaints against him and another former York psychiatrist, William Kerr.

He said that at a cost of £3.2 million, the inquiry had established that a now defunct health trust had failed to handle complaints very well a quarter of century ago.

He criticised the inquiry's decision to consider evidence not only from patients who lodged complaints at the time against him and Kerr, but also from former patients who only complained in the late 1990s after the authorities had begun "trawling" for complaints.

"How could the NHS have handled complaints that didn't exist?" he asked.

But an inquiry spokesman said that such patients had been asked to give evidence because, under its terms of reference, the inquiry had been asked to examine how policies and procedures had worked against patients making contemporaneous complaints.

He added that the inquiry, which had made scores of recommendations for changes in the NHS, had done far more than establish that a defunct health trust had failed to handle complaints very well.

Meanwhile, Haslam has revealed that after losing his libel claim against the Sunday Times, over an article which had accused him of being a serial rapist, he had faced a claim for costs of half a million pounds, although the figure finally agreed had been less.

Leeds Crown Court was told on his conviction that he had faced financial ruin over the failed libel action.

Haslam said today that he had only avoided such ruin after being left money following the death of his 103- year-old mother.

Updated: 10:12 Wednesday, August 03, 2005