A WOMAN downloaded child porn from the internet in an act of “twisted revenge” against her common-law husband, a jury at Worcester Crown Court heard.

The woman complained to police that he had accessed the vile images – but later laughed in a school playground about how she had “set him up” after suspecting he was having an affair behind her back, said defence barrister Samantha Powis.

The mother-of-two also told police their daughter had revealed she had a secret about her father’s behaviour to her when she was five years old.

The girl claimed in an interview that her father molested her one morning as she lay in bed at the family home in Madresfield, near Malvern, between May 1, 2009 and May 31, 2010.

On trial was a 32-year-old man who denied oral rape, sexual activity with a family member and inciting a family member to engage in sexual activity.

The jury took only 20 minutes to clear him of all three charges by unanimous verdicts.

He left court in tears and has now moved away from the family to live in a different part of the country.

Miss Powis said: “The mother deliberately downloaded child porn on her computer and tried to pass it off as the defendant.

“She failed to pot him so she upped her game.

“This was some kind of twisted revenge.”

The prosecution conceded in the three-day hearing that the mother was a drug taker, had falsely set up the defendant over child porn and that there was no medical evidence to support its case. In December last year, the Crown Prosecution Service interviewed the girl to assess her credibility and to find out if her evidence to police had been prompted by coaching.

Prosecutors concluded the girl had given “a genuinely truthful account”, the jury heard.

But Miss Powis said the girl showed no distress or trauma when officers went to her school and spoke to her in the presence of her headmistress about the alleged sexual abuse.

She said the girl’s account, later filmed on DVD, was inconsistent with accounts given by her mother and grandmother.

Miss Powis added: “There never was a secret.

In this case, there is overwhelming doubt.”

The accused – who cannot be identified to protect the child – told the court that his former partner suffered from paranoia, wrongly suspected him of an affair and had difficulty getting up in the morning due to drug addiction.

He said he “loved his daughter to bits” and called her “the apple of his eye”, insisting they had been very close.