A former lorry driver has been jailed after memory cards loaded with child sex abuse images were found inside a laptop bag.

A woman dating Vincent Terry called police after she grew worried about the way he was talking about children.

Officers found three memory cards and a computer tower, which together contained almost 3,000 indecent images depicting children as young as three, Maidstone Crown Court heard.

Terry, 43, of Plains Avenue, Maidstone, admitted 10 counts of distributing, making and possessing indecent images of children dating from 2005 to last year.

The pictures included five at the worst level - photos depicting sadism or beastiality.

Most were shared over the now-defunct computer program Google Hello, said to have been "hijacked" by paedophiles.

Terry had previously persuaded a six-year-old girl to perform sexual acts on him when he was a teenager - for which he received a suspended prison term for gross indecency in 1996.

Judge Philip Statman said the new offences did not involve any contact, but the public needed to be safe.

He jailed Terry for three years, gave him an indeterminate Sexual Offences Prevention Order and placed him on the sex offenders' register for life.

Terry will be barred from ever working with children again.