A pervert who raped a young girl and encouraged a boy and a man to have sex with her has been jailed for 17 years.

Judge Martin Joy told Paul Telling: "It was a monstrous regime of sexual abuse over time."

Maidstone Crown Court heard the 44-year-old preyed on the victim by giving her alcohol and played sexual card games with her. He then introduced others into his sordid world.

Telling, formerly of Trafalgar Court, Gillingham, was convicted in February of five charges of rape, two of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, two of arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence, sexual assault and assault by penetration.

Prosecutor Christopher May said the girl eventually told police how Telling would get her "completely wasted". They would play cards and he would always win because she was too drunk.

The card games involved taking clothes off and walking around naked in the open. It progressed to sex acts. She did not refuse because she did not know it was wrong, the court heard.

Telling introduced a teenaged boy into the games and encouraged her to have sex with him. Both of them had sex with her separately.

The boy introduced a friend, aged 20, to her and he had sex with her also. Telling had full sex with the girl.

Paul Telling was sentenced at Maidstone Crown Court

He gave her £20 to keep quiet and warned her not to tell anybody. Mr May said it was manipulation to prevent her from revealing the reality of what was going on.

"She was thinking it was normal, like a ritual you had to go through," he said. "She didn't tell anybody. She later said it was kind of a mental game. She was kind of twisted.

"The Crown says he took advantage of her for his own sexual ends."

The girl eventually told her mother there were things that were too painful to reveal.

Telling, now of Eastbourne, East Sussex, denied all the allegations, claiming he never had sex with the girl.

The 20-year-old was arrested and cautioned for causing or inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity.