The Police Family Liaison Officer appointed to the family of Jessica Chapman during the Soham murder inquiry was charged with Indecently Assaulting a teenage girl, the force investigating him said.

West Midlands Police said Detective Constable Brian Stevens, 41 at the time, would face two counts of indecently assaulting the 13-year-old when he appeared in court again.

The father-of-two, who served with Cambridgeshire Police, was also accused of three counts of making indecent images of children on top of the three similar alleged offences he was charged with earlier.

His colleague, Constable Antony Goodridge, 34, who was an Exhibits Officer during the investigation into the deaths of Jessica and Holly Wells, both ten, was charged with a further 12 counts of making indecent images of children, having already been accused of four similar offences.

The two officers were first arrested as part of a worldwide investigation into alleged Internet pornography. West Midlands Police conducted the investigation into Stevens and Goodridge at the request of colleagues in Cambridgeshire and supervised by the Police Complaints Authority.

Steven's ex-partner, Louise Austin, an administrator with the Crown Prosecution Service, was also arrested and charged with Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice. Austin reportedly provided Stevens with an alibi for one of the occasions when pornography was allegedly downloaded to his computer.

Detective Constable Stevens was cleared of the pornography charges at London's Snaresbrook Crown Court after key evidence was found to contain "substantial errors.

The officer, who remained suspended by Cambridgeshire police pending an internal investigation, spoke at the time of his "tremendous relief" when he walked free from court.

He was cleared because of flaws in evidence produced by the prosecution to make the case that only he could have been responsible for images found on his computer. After the case Stevens, a father-of-two, offered no explanation as to how images got there.

His name appeared on a list of 279 suspected paedophiles handed to Cambridgeshire Police in early July last year as part of Operation Ore, which was triggered by a US Postal Service inquiry into pay-per-view child porn websites in Texas. In police interviews Stevens "persistently denied" that he had downloaded the images, that he had known they were on the computer or that he was the only person to use the laptop, the court was told.

The child abuse allegations were dropped after prosecutors learned of a personal tragedy affecting one of the complainants. The court also heard that one of the girls giving evidence against him changed her statement. The Common Serjeant of London, Peter Beaumont QC, ordered not guilty charges to be recorded on all 11 charges at Snaresbrook Crown Court.

Stevens was cleared of five charges of possessing indecent photographs of children, three charges of distributing indecent photographs of children and three charges of indecently assaulting girls under the age of 16.

His lawyer William Clegg, QC told the court "Being falsely accused of charges as sensational and as serious as these have clearly placed an enormous strain on the defendant and his family, who clearly now feel a real sense of relief their ordeal is over."

Stevens embraced his wife Jane as he left the courtroom and they left the courthouse hand in hand, followed by Mr Stevens's 19-year-old son Ian.

Soham Policeman Accused of Making up Child Porn Alibi

The police officer assigned to chaperone the family of one of the murdered Soham schoolgirls concocted an alibi "as a desperate ploy" to get him off charges of downloading questionable images on his computer, a court was told yesterday.

DC Brian Stevens, 43, who was so close to the parents of Jessica Chapman that he read out a poem at the dead girl's memorial, had later been charged with downloading indecent pictures of children.

At first he said he had his laptop with him at the home and had left it on in his room and that others had used it.

He was charged the next day but just before the case was due to come to court, and almost a year after he was arrested, his story changed. Mr Joyce said that Austin, who is also charged with perverting the course of justice, told police that Stevens had come to her home to comfort her after the break-up of her relationship. She said he arrived shortly before midday and had spent the afternoon, night and next morning with her. She said he did not have his laptop with him.

These accusations were dropped just before the case went to court in August last year but Stevens, a married father of two, was re-arrested a month later and accused of perverting the course of justice.

A jury at the Old Bailey was told that Stevens had conspired with Louise Austin, 32, a close friend and a case worker at the Crown Prosecution Service, to lie to police to avoid prosecution.

Miss Austin claimed that he had been at her house in Cambridgeshire the night he was said to have saved three "questionable" images from the internet on to his laptop. She said he did not have the computer with him.

But the prosecution said it had "overwhelming evidence" that that was not the case and the pair had worked together in a last-ditch "desperate" ploy to allow him to evade prosecution. Peter Joyce, QC, prosecuting, said "The prosecution case is that the alibi given by Louise Austin to Brian Stevens was concocted, fabricated, made up, in short a lie."

The jury was told that Stevens, of Cambridgeshire, had spent a week at Flint House, in Goring, near Windsor, in June 2002, a police convalescence home where he received treatment for an injured knee. During that time they claim that he downloaded three illegal images on his Samsung laptop at 2.01am, 2.05am and 2.13am on June 9.

He was arrested on Sept 12, 2002, and questioned about the images allegedly found by experts on the laptop. He denied any knowledge of the images.

Stevens was found guilty of perjury and sentenced to 8 months in prison, but only served 93 days, being released under the Electronic Tagging System.

Stevens was jailed after being convicted at the Old Bailey of lying about an alibi during his abandoned trial for allegedly downloading child pornography from the internet.