VICTIMS of disgraced surgeon Richard Neale are demanding to know why the police were making inquiries about him as early as 1988.

The call follows last week's revelation that North Yorkshire Police corresponded with the General Medical Council (GMC) about the former Northallerton surgeon 12 years before he was struck off.

In the intervening period, hundreds of women patients suffered at his hands.

Until the GMC's recent admission that the police had contacted them in 1988, about Neale being struck off in Canada, it had been assumed their first involvement had been in 1991.

Neale, who was struck off in the UK in 2000 after botching operations and lying to patients, was arrested and given a warning by North Yorkshire Police in 1991, following an incident with two other men in public toilets in Richmond.

He was allowed to continue as a consultant gynaecologist and obstetrician.

A formal police investigation into the surgeon's activities at the Friarage Hospital, in Northallerton, got under way in 1999.

It was called off in 2001 after the police were advised by the Crown Prosecution Service that there was no realistic prospect of criminal conviction.

Last week, Finlay Scott, chief executive of the GMC, wrote to the support group leader, Sheila Wright-Hogeland, apologising for failing to take action in 1988 - a decade before the council admitted receiving its first complaint about the surgeon.

In his letter he said: "From further recently discovered evidence submitted to the inquiry it is clear that in 1988 the North Yorkshire Police wrote to the GMC about the withdrawal of Richard Neale's licence in Ontario."

Graham Maloney, advisor to the support group, said: "Why were the police investigating Richard Neale as far back as 1988? This is the first time we have had evidence that the police were involved at such an early stage."

Mr Maloney triggered the official investigation by North Yorkshire Police by making a formal complaint in 1999.

He said: "For the police to be writing to the GMC in 1988 it must have been a serious matter. How did they get involved and why was no action subsequently taken?"

Senior officers have agreed to meet the group to discuss their concerns.

Mr Maloney said he would press senior officers to reveal the contents of the file on Neale at that meeting.

Read more about the Richard Neale scandal here.