The leader of an organisation which campaigns against paedophiles helped a family spirit their child away from the authorities after her parents feared she was to be placed in care, a court has heard.

Stuart Carnie, 37, has denied conspiracy to abduct, along with the girl's aunt, grandmother and grandfather, who cannot be named for legal reasons. The girl's parents have denied child abduction.

Thecampaigner who runs the Aberdeen-based organisation Freedom for Children, was a "protector of children", the court heard.

He was said to have recruited Pauline Thomson who is alleged to have provided a safe house for the girl, who was nine at the time, and her grandmother as they tried to flee police and Sunderland Social Services.

The local authority had won an interim care order after the girl's brother was placed in their care. Social services claimed that the girl's mother had exaggerated or invented medical conditions for her son because she had Fictitious Illness Syndrome - formerly known as Munchausen's syndrome by proxy, the court heard.

Thomson, 38, of Borrowlea Road, Forthside, Stirling, also denies conspiracy to abduct. Neither she, nor Carnie, are related to the family involved, who are from Wearside.

The jury at Newcastle Crown Court was told the family contacted Carnie, of North Andersen Drive, Aberdeen, through a third party.

The girl and her grandmother were on the run for almost all of February 1999. Police eventually caught up with them at a flat in Cowie, near Stirling.

The case, which is expected to last up to seven weeks, continues.