FOR Katie Dean it was the best Mothers’ Day present of all – having her baby boy back.

Yesterday’s happiness was something Katie and her soldier husband Matthew could only have dreamed of after they were accused of abusing little Louie.

A hospital scan showed blood between his brain and skull and then a doctor at Southampton General Hospital claimed an Xray showed Louie had a broken rib.

The Deans, who always protested their innocence, were forced to go to court to clear their names.

It was only after a year-long battle that their son, now aged 18 months, was finally allowed back to live with them and his big sisters Charlotte, nine, and Daisy, five.

The ordeal started when a scan – taken while Matthew, a lance corporal in the Princess of Wales’ Royal Regiment, was stationed in Germany – showed Louie had blood between his brain and skull.

Further X-rays seemed to show no more injuries until a doctor claimed she had spotted a broken rib. When the pair next turned up at the hospital in Bielefeld with Louie he was pulled from their arms and they were arrested and taken away to be interrogated.

Katie’s mum Christine Long, 62, from Fair Oak, immediately flew out to Germany and was able to foster her grandson so he did not have to be taken into care. She then faced more than a year of supervising visits from her daughter and son-in-law. Matthew and Katie were not allowed to bathe or feed their son without Christine present.

For Matthew and Katie the only way to get Louie back was to return to the UK.

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Hampshire social services took up Louie’s case and applied to have him taken into care.

But a High Court judge sitting at Portsmouth County Court ruled that the bleed on his brain must have been the result of an accident or a medical condition and said it could not be proved that his rib had ever been broken.

Social services did not even cross examine Matthew and Katie in court when they realised their case was so weak.