Soham officer posed as schoolgirl
Soham detective Brian Stevens - who was yesterday cleared of child pornography offences - has admitted he posed as a 13-year-old girl in an internet chatroom.
Dc Stevens was the police liaison officer to the family of Jessica Chapman, the schoolgirl murdered with her friend Holly Wells in Soham, Cambridgeshire last year.
He walked free from London's Snaresbrook Court yesterday after the prosecution case collapsed, with no evidence offered against him.
At a magistrates hearing in Bury St Edmunds last September, not reported for legal reasons, the father of two said he had accessed an internet chatroom posing as a teenage girl, because he was curious.
Twelve pornographic images were found on the laptop computer of Mr Stevens, but prosecution lawyers admitted that Brian Underhill - a computer forensic analyst and former police officer - had made "substantial errors" in the analysis of the computer and that they therefore could not prove he had exclusive access to the machine.
Despite his acquittal, Mr Stevens will remain suspended from his duties with Cambridgeshire Police until an internal inquiry is held.
The detective will face intense scrutiny from bosses as to why his name and credit card details were given to an illegal US site. He claims his card was cloned.
He will also be quizzed about his chatroom activities.