long-awaited findings of an investigation into how a child sex attacker was freed just months before he killed in the North-East will be released tomorrow.

The inquiry was launched after Dominic McKilligan was jailed for life, in July 1999, for the murder of Wesley Neailey, in Newcastle. McKilligan was 19 at the time. A rape conviction was subsequently quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Nine months before strangling the 11-year-old, McKilligan had been released from Aycliffe Young People's Centre, in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham, where he had been sent for a string of sex attacks on young boys, in his home town of Bournemouth, in 1994.

McKilligan was not eligible to be placed on the Sex Offenders' Register because his sentence - a three-year supervision order - ended the day before the provisions of the Sex Offenders Act 1997 came into force.

The report has been commissioned by Durham County Council, Bournemouth Borough Council and Newcastle City Council. It has been written by the Bridge Child Care Development Service.

It will establish whether there are any lessons to be learnt from the case about the way in which professionals and agencies work together to safeguard children.

McKilligan was sent to the Aycliffe centre by Bournemouth Social Services after being convicted of 11 counts of indecent assault and one of gross indecency, on victims aged between seven and 11.

After being released on August 31, 1997, he moved to Tyneside, without the police or probation service being told of his whereabouts.

Wesley disappeared from his home in Croydon Road, Newcastle, in June 1998. His body was found a month later, near Healey, Northumberland.

The centre's then general manager, Ken Black, said that informing the police was Bournemouth's responsibility and there was no formal contact with McKilligan after his release.

But Bournemouth social services said the centre agreed to inform the police. They also claim to have paid a bill sent by Aycliffe for £1,500 of outreach support for McKilligan after his release.