A convicted rapist from Hythe – found with vile images of children on his computer – claimed he was secretly tracking perverts.

Matthew Brown told police he had been sickened by inmates making fun of child sex pictures.

The 25-year-old married man, from Palmer Drive, said he had stored up images of children as young as four years old – after planning to pose as a policeman to trap paedophiles.

But Judge Heather Norton rejected the vigilante account after hearing he had been jailed in 2005 for rape and sex assault on children.

She also heard how after being released from his sentence in 2011, he set up a Facebook account using an alias...and kept that secret from police.

Canterbury Crown Court heard that when officers raided his home in June last year they discovered he had also been indulging in chats with other sick perverts about threesomes with children.

His barrister Guy Wyatt claimed that the weblogs were just talk, adding: “There is no evidence it was more than just shared fantasies”.

But Judge Norton ruled that Brown, who admitted four charges of downloading illegal images of children, posed a serious risk to children and jailed him for two years.

She told Brown, who also admitted failing to tell police about the alias, that he will serve three-quarters of that sentence – and then added another two years he will serve on licence when released.

Prosecutor Dominic Connolly said that when police raided the house, Brown, who was with his wife, told them: “I know what this is all about.”

Officers seized his computer and mobile phone more than 70 sick child sex images – including of victims aged between four to six – and five minutes of movies.

Mr Connolly said that initially Brown denied having accessed the Internet to look for illegal pictures – and then claimed he was making a collection in the hope of trapping paedophiles by posing as a police officer.

But the judge told him: “It is impossible to accept that as an explanation.”

She also issued an order prohibiting Brown for having a phone or a computer accessing the Internet without special software to monitor which sites he uses.

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