"We owe her a huge debt and a sincere thank-you, " says Fidelma Geraghty, who had an unnecessary hysterectomy carried out by Neary after her baby girl was delivered stillborn in 1997. "Everyone owes her a debt. If it wasn't for her, this could still be going on today, and hundreds more women could have been affected. I would love to know who she is."

But so far Ann remains the unrewarded mystery woman of the Neary story. She started work at Drogheda hospital in late September 1997, having trained as a nurse and midwife in the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast. "She did not share her colleagues' admiration of Dr Neary and found him opinionated and difficult, " the inquiry report said. Crucially, Ann was also "appalled" at some of Neary's practices, which she found "outdated and too interventionist".

Ann was particularly upset when she saw that hysterectomies were being carried out with some regularity by Neary and also on young women. None of her colleagues were willing to challenge Neary, and Ann was told that was how the hospital worked. Consultants were "clinically independent. They could not be questioned about their procedures." The power of the consultant had reigned for a long time at the maternity unit in Drogheda, and for most of the 1980s and 1990s, Michael Neary was the senior consultant.

Erratic moods According to Judge Harding Clark, Neary was a man with a strong personality who had very strong views on many subjects. His demeanour and mood had a major influence on the maternity unit. He was a man who did not like to lose an argument. In their interviews with the inquiry team, some nurses recalled his erratic moods. Significantly, when he was questioned he became defensive and unfriendly. A combination of this personality type, working in an unquestioning environment, meant Neary's defective medical practices went unchecked for many years.

But Ann was not put off so easily. When she had an opportunity to speak with a solicitor for the North Eastern Health Board in October 1998, she made her concerns known. Neary was suspended shortly afterwards. In September 2002, he was struck off the medical register.

Fled to Spain Last week, with the publication of the Harding Clark report, the one time high-flying consultant had his name damned in the most public manner possible. Neary fled to Spain while Ann emerged as a modern-day Florence Nightingale.

"We never knew who she really was and we never met her, " says Catriona Molloy of Patient Focus, the group that represents former patients of Neary. "But she is a role model for all nurses in Ireland. It took great courage to do what she did."

Molloy and Geraghty were among the last patients on whom Neary carried out unnecessary hysterectomies in 1996 and 1997 respectively.

Molloy found out about Neary's history from a story in the Irish Times in 1998, while Geraghty only discovered what he had been doing in 2002.

"I was watching these women talk about their experiences with Dr Neary on The Late Late Show and the words they used made the hairs on my neck stand up, " Geraghty said. "They were the exact same things he told me, 'You're lucky to be going home alive, you could have died'."

Geraghty had two children delivered by Neary before her third pregnancy in October 1997. "We went to him because he was highly recommended and the best in the area, " she recalled. Her unborn daughter died in the womb and had to be removed by caesarean. Neary told her that her placenta had wrapped itself around her womb. It was "a total mess in there, " he said, as Geraghty reluctantly agreed to a hysterectomy.

"It was an emotional time for us and very difficult, but he stressed he had never seen anything like it in 30 years of medicine, " Geraghty recalled this weekend. "He told my husband I was lucky to be going home alive and not in a box. We were eternally grateful to him."

When she found out she need never have gone through such pain, Geraghty was in shock. "It was so unbelievably difficult to comprehend it, to try and understand and stop yourself going through all the emotions of it again. But what it came down to was that we had our plans and they weren't fulfilled."

Nightmares Molloy was also just so pleased to be alive that the fact that she could no longer have children seemed irrelevant. "After all, my children kept their mother and I was still there to rear them. That was the main thing, " she said.

"It was the thought that I had so nearly died that terrified me. I used to have nightmares about dying."

After pathology and independent medical reports found that both Molloy and Geraghty were perfectly healthy prior to their hysterectomies, both women tried to find closure in any way they could. Molloy threw herself into Patient Focus and was one of the 10 women who brought a case against Neary and succeeded in getting him struck off the medical register. Geraghty also got involved in Patient Focus and found relief in making her story public.

Last week's publication of the Harding Clark report was a milestone for these women in their long battle to find out the truth about what happened at Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital during the years when Neary practiced medicine. "I'm pleased that this independent view is out there and everyone can know that this happened, " Geraghty said. "It happened and it could happen again. That is the truly terrifying thing and what we need to prevent from happening in the future."

Dominant personalities The inquiry report concluded that Neary was the dominant personality in the maternity unit. He was described as a hard worker who was liked by many patients, although on a number of occasions, he was reprimanded for rudeness and having an abrupt manner with patients and midwives.

In all, Harding Clark heard from 280 witnesses. Two very different pictures of Neary emerge from the stories these people had to tell. To some, he was a man who hated women;

who was protected by the nuns who thought he walked on water; who took a sadistic pleasure from mutilating women; and who thought he was God and could decide which women should have children.

But there were others who, despite the emerging evidence of what Neary had done, were still prepared to defend the consultant. To these people, he was a man who was an incredibly good and hard-working doctor who has been totally misrepresented; who saved many women's lives and who did the best he could in very difficult conditions.

What Judge Harding Clark uncovered was, in her own words, "a complex story" of which "many strands remain tangled in the personalities of the participants". But it seems the report has not helped women like Catriona Molloy and Fidelma Geraghty understand why Michael Neary . . . a man described by the inquiry report as "a committed doctor with a misplaced sense of confidence in his own ability" . . . did what he did.

"Nothing will ever help me to understand him, " Molloy said. "All we can do is put it in the past and make sure it never happens again. But the fact remains that he was able to walk away and leave us to clean up the mess." Geraghty agrees.

"We will never know what went on, " she said. "Why did this happen? We will go to our graves never knowing why."