THE police have launched an investigation into how an internal report written by former deputy police chief Lenny Harper about the historical child abuse inquiry was leaked.

The report, forwarded to Attorney General William Bailhache by police chief Graham Power, was written by Mr Harper, pictured, after Mr Bailhache asked Mr Power about comments made to the media by Mr Harper immediately after a couple being questioned about alleged historical child cruelty were released without charge.

Although it was an internal document, the report was leaked on Senator Stuart Syvret’s internet blog.

This morning, the new deputy police chief, David Warcup, confirmed that they believed that the leaked report published on the internet was a genuine copy of an internal document.

Mr Warcup said: ‘We are now in the process of examining how the report came to enter the public domain.’ The report revealed Mr Harper’s anger at what he claimed had been a U-turn by a lawyer appointed by the Attorney General for the prosecution, who, he said, had given the police the go-ahead to charge the couple with three counts of grave and criminal assault and then changed his mind and they had to be released without charge.

In response to those claims, however, Mr Bailhache said the incident had been a misunderstanding between the two agencies and that at no stage during the couple’s interview had the lawyer told the police there was enough evidence to go ahead and charge.