The detective who acted as liaison officer to the family of Soham murder victim Jessica Chapman has been jailed for eight months after he was found guilty at the Old Bailey of conspiring to pervert the course of justice.

Dc Brian Stevens, 43, gave police a false alibi when he was being investigated over allegations that he downloaded child porn from the Internet while recovering from a foot injury at Flint House police convalescent home in Goring, near Wallingford, in June 2002.

His close friend Louise Austin, 32, an executive case officer for the Crown Prosecution Service, provided the alibi and was found guilty of conspiring to pervert the course of justice. She was given a six-month sentence, suspended for two years.

Stevens was arrested at his Cambridgeshire home in September, 2002, after his name came up in a UK-wide trawl of Internet paedophiles.

He was charged after indecent images of children were found on his laptop. But the case was dropped because of mistakes in a computer expert's report.

At first, Stevens had claimed he had let other people at Flint House use the laptop, but later said the night the images were downloaded he was at Louise Austin's home.