Sion Jenkins last night said the police "caricatured" him to convince juries he was guilty of murdering his foster daughter Billie-Jo.

In the first interview since his acquittal, Mr Jenkins, 48, insisted he was never violent or oppressive as his former wife Lois claimed.

Mr Jenkins, a former deputy head teacher, was finally cleared this year of battering to death Billie-Jo, 13, on the patio of his Hastings home in 1997.

He told Trevor McDonald on ITV1's Tonight show the police manipulated his wife while she was vulnerable. He said: "The allegations that Lois has made are not true. I think Lois was in a vulnerable position."

He added: "The police had a problem they didn't have a motive. What the police needed was for me to be violent.

"The stereotype of the deputy head running round the house with a cane, caning his children, being oppressive, is an absolute caricature of the truth."

Mr Jenkins' daughters, Esther and Maya, gave a statement to the show saying their father's denial of using corporal punishment was not true.

Mr Jenkins said: "When I was first sent to prison I had a number of days which were real dark nights of the soul. I lost my faith in God."

He admitted lying about his credentials on his CV in order to get his job but he said police used the CV and twisted it to make people believe he might be the killer. He said: "It became an albatross around my neck."

He is understood to have been paid a five-figure sum for the interview.