Another three charges were withdrawn.Today, Mr Neale faces being struck off the medical register by the GMC’s professional conduct committee, which will decide whether the facts found proved yesterday amount to serious professional misconduct.During 14 years he left a trail of damaged women around the country and one of the most urgent questions raised by the case is why he was not identified and stopped earlier. The same question was raised by the case of Rodney Ledward, the Kent gynaecologist who was struck off in 1998 and about whom a public inquiry reported in May. The Neale and the Ledward cases have eerie similarities.Mr Neale also faces a police investigation for criminal negligence and assault and could be extradited to Canada, where he worked from 1977 to 1985 when he was struck off the register following the death of a patient, Geraldine Krawchuck.Mr Neale qualified in London in 1970 before emigrating to Canada in 1977. When he returned to Britain in 1985 he worked at the NHS Friarage Hospital in Northallerton, North Yorkshire, and at several private hospitals in the area, despite his past. He left the Friarage under a cloud in 1995, with a £100,000 pay-off, and worked subsequently at a series of hospitals in the South.Among his patients in North Yorkshire was Sheila Wright-Hogeland, who became a leading witness at the GMC hearing. Mrs Wright-Hogeland, 52, spent six years under the care of Mr Neale for endometriosis, a condition in which the lining of the womb becomes inflamed.

Mr Neale was rude and abusive, telling her at one point to “grin and bear” the pain which was by then excruciating. He so neglected her condition that eventually, he was forced to perform an emergency hysterectomy.Mrs Wright-Hogeland later established a support group for injured patients of Mr Neale which was instrumental in bringing the case against him. She said yesterday: “This is the right verdict but it has come 14 years too late. It is totally unaccceptable that a doctor who had been struck off in Canada could come over here and find employment for 14 years in this country until action was taken against him, not by the people who should have done so [the GMC], but by the patients they are supposed to protect.”.

Ten top children’s specialists accuse the Government today of ignoring the health needs of children and increasing the burden of disease in the future by their neglect. Ten top children’s specialists accuse the Government today of ignoring the health needs of children and increasing the burden of disease in the future by their neglect.
The experts, who include paediatricians, nurses and public health specialists, say the health of children and young people is vital to the future success of society but no one is speaking up for them at government level.New-born babies, infants, children and adolescents are all at different stages of emotional, intellectual and physical development yet they are lumped together and treated as small adults, neglecting their specific needs. Only one in 10 health authorities has any policy on adolescent physical health.The group, led by Al Aynsley-Green, professor of paediatrics at Great Ormond Street Hospital and president of the Association of Clinical Professors of Paediatrics, and David Hall, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics, say England is lagging behind Scotland and Wales, where children’s services have become a top priority. In Scotland, a minister for children has been appointed.They say an independent commissioner for children’s services is needed in England to oversee a national strategy for children and young people’s health. “The health of children determines the health of adults and much adult disease has its origins in childhood,” Professor Aynsley-Green said.Adolescents were a group that was particularly neglected yet that was the age when the problems of obesity, drug taking, smoking and suicide all began.

Professor Aynsley-Green said: “There is only one physician specialising in adolescence in the whole of the UK.”The group, writing in the British Medical Journal, pay tribute to the Government’s efforts to reduce poverty but criticise the introduction of initiatives without recognising that children and young people have specific needs. “In England, in spite of the UK Government’s support for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, there has been no national or governmental body or person specifically charged with protecting their rightsnor with assessing the impact on children of the policies emerging from individual ministries,” they write.Professor Aynsley-Green said: “There is no tsar for children. Is that because children cannot vote?”The problem was highlighted by the lack of support for children with brain injuries from accidents. Only two centres in the country provide support for severely injured children, leaving the majority of families to cope as best they can at home.Carol Minnikin, 52, from Throckley in Newcastle upon Tyne, has cared for her 13-year-old son Damian since he was in collision with a car in a cycling accident when he was nine. After surgery to save his life, in which the front left lobe of his brain was removed, he spent five months in hospital because there was nowhere else for him to go.Ms Minnikin, a single mother who also has two grown-up children, said: “For six weeks no one knew if he would live or die. When he came round he had to learn everything again – he couldn’t walk, he slowly got his voice back, he had to go through potty training again.