A married lorry driver who carried on a clandestine sexual relationship with a schoolgirl has been jailed for four years.

Darren Jones, 40, had the relationship with the teenager behind his wife’s back.

In fact, on one occasion Jones’ wife almost caught the couple having sex – but they pretended they were doing something else.

Canterbury Crown Court heard the relationship carried on for 11 months with Jones, of John Dutton Way, Kennington, and the child regularly having sex.

But years after it had ended the teenager alerted police officers and revealed details of their relationship how she was sent sex messages on WhatsApp – which Jones later urged her to delete. She also told officers how Jones had videoed their sexual encounters on his mobile phone.

Prosecutor Matthew Bolt said that Jones was arrested and denied the allegations – but changed his pleas to guilty to four child sex offences on the day he was due to stand trial.

His wife and family were sitting in the public gallery as details of the relationship were revealed.

"He realised that he had given in to the desires of the flesh but there had been some love between them at some point" - David Howell, defending

David Howell, defending, told the judge, Recorder Neil Saunders, that Jones’ wife was standing by him and he recognised he had betrayed his family.

He said: “He realised that he had given in to the desires of the flesh but there had been some love between them at some point.

“Since then he has done a lot of soul-searching and in reality he is a nice, pleasant hard-working man who just allowed himself to be distracted.”