A mother of eight was today jailed for two years for orchestrating the abduction of a young girl to keep her away from social services.

Child welfare campaigner Penny Mellor, who had denied a charge of conspiracy to abduct a child, was the ''Svengali'' of an operation to spirit the child into hiding, a judge said.

Mellor, who recently gave birth to her eighth baby, put the girl's family in touch with fellow campaigner Stuart Carnie.

He took the child, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and her grandmother across to Ireland before moving the pair to the Stirling area of Scotland.

Police who tracked them down discovered Mellor had been in regular e-mail and telephone contact with the family prior to the child's abduction.

Mellor co-ordinated the movement of the child from home and was in constant contact with Carnie and the family whilst they were on the run between January 22 and February 28 in 1999.

At Newcastle Crown Court today Judge Guy Whitburn accused Mellor of plotting the abduction: ''Having seen you giving evidence and having considered the whole case, you were the Svengali of the whole plan.''

Mellor was originally contacted by the family via the Internet because they feared their nine-year-old daughter was going to be taken into care.

Doctors had diagnosed the child's mother with Fictitious Illness Syndrome, otherwise known as Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy, in which sufferers cause fictitious diseases in their children.

The family turned to Mellor because she had founded the campaigning charity Families Against Munchausen's Syndrome.

But Judge Whitburn said she had ''tiresome and eccentric'' views on child welfare and she convinced herself and the family that the young girl was in danger if she became a ward of Sunderland City Council social services.

Judge Whitburn told the Court he believed Mellor planted the idea of taking the girl out of Wearside in the family's minds.

Shortly before the plan was put into action, the girl, her mother and grandmother had all stayed at Mellor's Midlands home.

Mellor stared impassively as she was jailed for two years. Judge Whitburn said: ''What you are guilty of is orchestrating the abduction of a child for your own propaganda purposes.''

Her barrister, Tim Parkin, had earlier argued that Mellor took a highly moral stance on child care.

He said: ''This is a woman who is desperately concerned about child welfare. She is desperately concerned about where children live. She is not herself a mother in a dysfunctional way. She's a quite splendid mother and has children of varying ages. ''This has always been done because she has believed that she was acting in the best interest of others.

''This has been a harrowing experience for her, it will remain a harrowing experience for her family.''

At an earlier hearing, the girl's mother and grandmother were each jailed for nine months and the father for six months for their parts in the abduction. All three pleaded guilty to conspiracy to abduct a child at the start of their trial last year. Carnie, who also pleaded guilty, absconded while on bail and a warrant is still outstanding for his arrest.