Soham case officer on sex assault charges

The family liaison officer who looked after the family of Jessica Chapman after she and her friend Holly Wells went missing has been charged with indecently assaulting a 13-year-old.

Detective Constable Brian Stevens, 41, who became a close confidant of Sharon and Leslie Chapman after their 10-year-old daughter disappeared, already faces three charges of making, and incitement to distribute indecent pseudo-photographs of children.

West Midlands Police saidhe had now been charged with a further three similar counts as well as two of indecent assault. Det Con Stevens was arrested last month with Det Con Antony Goodridge, 34, an exhibits officer from the Soham inquiry, as part of a worldwide investigation into alleged internet pornography.

Det Con Goodridge, 34, was charged with a further 12 counts of making indecent images of children, having already been accused of four similar offences.

The fresh charges will be put to them when they appear before magistrates at Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, on 11 November.

Holly and Jessica went missing in Soham, Cambridgeshire, on 4 August. Their bodies were found in an isolated copse near Lakenheath airbase, Suffolk, 13 days later.

Yesterday – as police completed a search of their Soham cottage – Ian Huntley and Maxine Carr were taken from prison and interviewed by detectives at separate stations outside Cambridgeshire.

Mr Huntley, 28, is charged with the double murder and conspiracy to pervert the course of justice, while Ms Carr, 25, a former teaching assistant at Holly and Jessica's primary school is accused of perverting the course of justice. Their two-storey home – tied to Mr Huntley's former job as caretaker of Soham Village College – is sealed off and may be searched again.

An appeal fund set up in memory of murdered schoolgirls has now topped £50,000.