CAMPAIGNERS are hoping today's inquiry into two psychiatrists who sexually assaulted women patients will help to prevent similar offences in the future.

Former patients claim that complaints against the two North Yorkshire psychiatrists, Dr Michael Haslam and Dr William Kerr, were not taken seriously.

Dr Haslam is serving a seven-year prison sentence after he was convicted at Leeds Crown Court last year of raping one patient and indecently assaulting two others in hospitals in York in the 1980s.

At a fact-finding hearing in 2000, a York Crown Court jury found Dr Kerr guilty of indecently assaulting a patient at a Ripon hospital in 1986.

Campaigners, headed by former Kerr patient Kathy Haq, 54, from Sunderland, believe that the powers-that-be failed to take complaints seriously.

The joint Kerr-Haslam inquiry was announced at the same time as the inquiry into disgraced North Yorkshire gynaecologist Richard Neale back in 2001 but has been delayed.

The main reason for the delay was the arrest of Dr Haslam in 2002 on charges of raping and indecently assaulting patients.

The inquiry, chaired by leading barrister Nigel Pleming QC, is expected to take evidence from patients, NHS administrators and former colleagues of the two now elderly psychiatrists during the summer.

Their report will eventually be published by Health Secretary Dr John Reid.

Mrs Haq, who was a patient of Dr Kerr in Harrogate, said: "I am pleased that today has finally arrived.

"It is over three years since we began campaigning for an inquiry into what really happened within North Yorkshire Psychiatric Services all those years ago."

During the delays, caused by Haslam's arrest and subsequent conviction, more women had come forward and "found the courage" to give evidence to the inquiry, she said.

"We hope that now the complaints will be examined and that those who were told, by patients and some staff, what Kerr and Haslam were doing, will be asked to explain why they did nothing."

Mrs Haq said: "We hope that lessons will be learned and procedures put in place to prevent this ever happening again. Patients must be protected from doctors such as these and the others that we have heard about over the past few years."