Gordon Wateridge leaves the Royal Court after being found guilty on a number of counts. Picture by Richard Wainwright (00770033)

STRONG criticism of former deputy police chief Lenny Harper’s handling of the Haut de la Garenne inquiry has been voiced by a lawyer and a senior judge, who has called his media activities ‘extraordinary’.

The international publicity generated by Mr Harper’s press conferences at the former children’s home ‘whipped up a frenzy of interest in … what turned out to be unfounded suggestions of multiple murders and torture in secret cellars under a building’, said Royal Court Commissioner Sir Christopher Pitchers as he rejected a pre-trial claim that men charged in the historical child abuse inquiry could not receive a fair trial because of the worldwide publicity.

Now retired and living in Scotland, Mr Harper has denied a claim that he was told by an archaeologist that a fragment of material found there and presented as ‘potential human remains’ predated the building. It is claimed that he was told this soon after it had been found.

Mr Harper’s actions in relation to the inquiry which he led were heavily criticised in a Royal Court hearing earlier this year which only now can be reported because of legal reasons.

At that hearing, Advocates Mike Preston and David Hopwood submitted that it would be impossible for their clients, Gordon Wateridge, Michael Aubin and Claude Donnelly, who were charged as part of the historical child abuse inquiry, to have a fair trial because of the worldwide publicity generated by the case. Mr Harper has since described the claims as ‘rubbish’.

Commissioner Sir Christopher Pitchers, who presided at the hearing and ruled that it was possible for the three men to have a fair trial.

• Full reports of the Assize trial verdict and pre-trial hearing in today’s Jersey Evening Post