Police inquiry leads to surgeon's arrest
20/01/2006

DISGRACED surgeon Richard Neale has been arrested after a lengthy police investigation.

The former consultant gynaecologist, who was struck off for a catalogue of errors that left some patients in agonising pain and unable to have children, was arrested and questioned by officers on Wednesday.

A spokesman for North Yorkshire Police said last night: "We can confirm that a 59-year-old man from the Boroughbridge area was arrested yesterday morning following a lengthy investigation into a number of alleged criminal offences.

"He was released on police bail pending further inquiries."

Mr Neale, a former consultant gynaecologist at the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, has been the subject of two police investigations.

A number of serious allegations were made against him by former patients after he was struck off the medical register for serious professional misconduct in 2000.

The first police investigation focused on the circumstances surrounding the deaths of three of Mr Neale's former patients, as well as allegations of assault and deception.

That investigation ended in 2001 when the Crown Prosecution Service said there were no grounds to justify a prosecution against the surgeon.

In 2004, The Northern Echo revealed that a second investigation, involving detectives and support workers, had begun.

It followed complaints by former patients about the inadequacy of the first investigation.

Witnesses have been interviewed in North Yorkshire and other parts of the UK, but this is understood to be the first time Mr Neale has been questioned by officers.

Mr Neale, from Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, was struck off the medical register in July 2000 after 34 out of 35 specimen allegations of serious professional misconduct were proved by the General Medical Council.

During the GMC investigation, it was found that he lied to patients about the length of NHS waiting lists to encourage them to go private, boasted that he was part of a nonexistent network of North Yorkshire specialists and claimed to have won a gold medal for surgery, a trophy he purchased from a dealer.

It also found that Mr Neale carried out operations without consent, performed substandard surgery and unnecessary procedures and failed to inform patients' GPs of complications resulting from his incompetence.

Women were left in agonising pain after complications following surgery.

The consultant worked at The Friarage from 1985 to 1995.

He also worked in Leicester, London and on the Isle of Wight.

It later emerged that the former surgeon had been struck off in Canada after the death of two of his patients before taking up his post at the Friarage Hospital.

Graham Maloney, an advisor to the Neale patient support group, which was the first to make a formal police complaint about the former gynaecologist, said last night:

"The Neale victims' group welcomes this move.

"We believe the police should be involved in these matters as a matter of course."