A children's doctor who was found with more than one million child sex abuse images has been jailed.

David Shaw was arrested at his old home in Maidstone in February 2019 where the National Crime Agency seized one of the "largest hauls" of indecent images it has ever seen.

The 48-year-old, who worked as a paediatrician and GP between 2005 and 2013, was found with more than 1.2million child sex abuse images on 16 of his devices.

Shaw, who most recently lived in Somerset, described himself as a "criminal" and "bad" person to officers before admitting to being sexually attracted to pre-pubescent girls.

The paedophile also claimed he became depressed when he tried to stop viewing the child sex abuse images and eventually quit his role as GP at this time.

He was charged with three counts of making and possessing indecent images of children and pleaded guilty at Maidstone Crown Court in October last year.

Yesterday, he was sentenced to two years and two months in prison for the mammoth haul of indecent images which he downloaded using anonymisation techniques on peer-to-peer sharing network Freenet.

"This is one of the largest collections of child sexual abuse images that the NCA has ever dealt with..."

Shaw trained at Guy’s Hospital Medical School and graduated in 2004. He was registered with the General Medical Council (GMC) and practised as a GP between 2005 and 2013, after which point his GMC membership lapsed and he no longer worked as a doctor.

He admitted to police he had been downloading these pictures since 2005, and had been expecting a visit from law enforcement at some point.

When sentencing him, Judge Saxby commented that as a specialist in paediatrics, Shaw more than others would have been aware of the harm inflicted on the children in the images he downloaded.

He also handed Shaw a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.

NCA Senior Investigator Tony Smith said: “This is one of the largest collections of child sexual abuse images that the NCA has ever dealt with, the scale of which was shocking.

“Not only did Shaw abuse his position of trust, he helped fuel the sickening trade in child sexual abuse images by downloading this material, which re-victimises every child.

“Tragically, behind these images are vulnerable children being exploited just to satisfy paedophiles.

“The NCA continues to pursue offenders like Shaw, make them accountable for their actions and to protect victims of online child sexual abuse.”

If you think you or someone you know has been a victim of child sexual abuse, you should report it to your local police on 101.