A former Sussex Police chief has hit back at criticisms of St Helena’s police force while he was in charge.

Peter Coll deemed “misleading and sensationalist” the leaked draft report prepared by investigators from a child safety charity sent by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) to the remote South Atlantic island.

The investigators from the Lucy Faithfull Foundation described a “significant problem with exploitative activity” in the British Overseas Territory and recommended an external review of the St Helena Police force.

Mr Coll was chief of police in St Helena from 2009, when he retired as a chief superintendent in Sussex Police, until his contract ended in November 2013.

The charity’s draft report said the grooming of girls in their early teens was a “significant issue” both in St Helena and its dependency Ascension Island, and described a “generic malaise in the upper echelons of the police force”.

The two investigators visited the island in May 2013 and their confidential draft report was leaked this summer.

Reviewers said they were “at odds” with Mr Coll’s stated view that sexual crimes on the island tended to be on the basis of “inappropriate relationships” rather than stranger crimes and said they found “violent and brutal” offences.

They said victim-blaming was prevalent in police and social services files, but noted “several notable successes” recently in police’s child abuse investigations.

Mr Coll, who now lives in Seaford, said the report disregarded “consistent improvements” in witness care and prosecutions over the past five years.

He said: “We were committed to doing all we could for those victims with the resources and skills available to us.”

Last October the FCO sent Northumbria Police to assess St Helena police “following anonymous allegations against specific police officers and broader issues about the efficacy of the service,” an FCO spokesman said. She said they found no evidence of criminality by individual officers and ways to improve police performance are “now being implemented under new leadership”.

The FCO is setting up an independent inquiry into “worrying allegations” about child abuse in St Helena, the spokeswoman added.

The island has a mutual support arrangement with Sussex Police. Mr Coll called in two senior police officers to help investigate after a whistle-blower alleged police misconduct.

Two former St Helena social workers have started employment tribunal proceedings against the FCO, claiming they suffered after whistle-blowing about child-safety concerns.