A paedophile who describes himself as “pretty pervy” attempted to groom a police officer's 'daughter'.

Russell Mills, from Herne Bay, plumbed so low he sifted through a friend's laundry basket to smell their little girl’s underwear.

The “dangerous” 64-year-old also tricked a parent into believing he was a qualified masseuse so he could grope their daughter, who was suffering a leg injury.

More recently, the paedophile surfed the internet searching for illicit material when he happened upon a woman prepared to farm out her 10-year-old daughter.

For weeks, Mills exchanged depraved messages and images over a Russian website with ‘Louise’, including children being sexually tortured over a Russian website.

But ‘Louise’, whose profile picture depicted a little girl, was an undercover officer working to catch Mills.

A hearing at Canterbury Crown Court on Thursday, court heard he sent reems of horrific, explicit images and messages, telling the decoy account he wished to rape her daughter.

With a bio describing himself as “pretty pervy and open minded”, Mills said he wished to meet at a McDonald’s restaurant and visit their address “for some pants sniffing”.

He expressed excitement about seeing toddlers in his hometown, and described hunting for dirty knickers in his friend’s laundry basket, which he had previously admitted to the police.

Prosecutor Tom Dunn explained Mills wrote numerous messages describing how aroused he became around children, and “wouldn’t be able to stop himself” from molesting Louise’s daughter.

The pervert, who has 30 previous convictions for crimes of a similar nature, has committed “no offence” since his two months of criminality in spring 2020, Edmund Fowler, mitigating, said.

Mr Fowler said the defendant, who was supported by family in the public gallery, entered early guilty pleas and wished to put his offending behind him.

Mills had become isolated and lonely during lockdown when he returned to his paedophilic ways online, the barrister added.

Last week Judge Rupert Lowe told Mills: “Someone somewhere has raped a child because people like you find it exciting.

“This is the life-changing abuse of children, life-destroying abuse, and surely in 2008 when you went to court about it, that must have been made clear to you.

"But in 2016 you went back to court for distributing further images of extreme child abuse and breaching your sexual harm prevention order.

“You are back again in 2022 for more of the same, but I am afraid it is worse this time.

“You went on the internet looking for people who you could communicate with about your desire to have sex with children and you found a single mother of two children from St Albans, who said she was sexually active with her own 10-year-old daughter.

“To you, that seemed ideal and so you linked up with her and you had a particular interest in her 10-year-old daughter, Jess.

“Now Louise was in fact an undercover police officer and you very quickly made it clear you wanted to join in the abuse of her daughter and if you had your way you’d have started when she was five or six.

“You described how you had got hold of the soiled knickers of the daughter of your friends, and that fact was certainly true.”

Mills, of Stanley Gardens, pleaded guilty to publishing an obscene article, distributing category A and C images, making category B images, and breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

The paedophile was handed a five-year extended licence at Canterbury Crown Court on Thursday, where a judge found him to be a “dangerous” offender.

He will serve two-thirds of a 30-month prison sentence before being considered for parole, then a further 20 months on licence.