Stevens arrest: Woman was ex-girlfriend

The woman arrested today with police liaison officer Brian Stevens was Louise Austin, an administrator with the Crown Prosecution Service, who had a relationship with Stevens before he married, according to reports.

Ms Austin, 32, reportedly provided him 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 remains 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.