THE mother of the teenager killed by a predatory paedophile said it was “heartbreaking” reading the report into how he was lost by police on Merseyside.

Peter Chapman, 35, was allowed to slip away from Merseyside Police with “terrible consequences”, the Independent Police Complaints Commission ruled this week.

Chapman, who was living in Kirkby, befriended 17-year-old childcare student Ashleigh Hall on Facebook by posing as a teenage boy. He then lured her to her death, raping and strangling her before dumping her body in a field.

The IPCC blamed “inadequate resources” for the “poor management” of the convicted rapist after they found just one officer, a PC, was left in charge of monitoring more than 60 perverts, including Chapman, in Knowsley.

Ashleigh’s mum, Andrea, 41, from County Durham, said she blamed the police for her daughter’s death.

Mrs Hall said: “It’s absolutely shocking.

“It was heartbreaking when they handed it [the report] to me.

“If they had done their job properly and managed him properly, and he had not gone missing for a year, he would never have got anywhere near my daughter.

“I knew the report was going to be bad but this was worse than we thought.”

The IPCC said that staffing levels in the Knowsley sex offender unit, which was in charge of monitoring Chapman, meant effective management of offenders was “impossible”.

Chapman was jailed for Ashleigh’s murder last March.