Paedophile Timothy Smith, from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, was jailed for 14 years
A ghost-hunting supermarket security guard who flew to the Philippines so he could film himself abusing a toddler has been jailed for 14 years.
Timothy Smith, 42, from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, boasted to police of his sexual interest in children as young as two and told how he had been offending for a decade.
However, the pervert did not see himself as a law-breaker, Maidstone Crown Court heard.
Smith, who worked as a security guard for Tesco and founded a small ghost-hunting group in Kent, was handed the extended sentence with a minimum term of 10 years on Tuesday after admitting 16 sexual offences.
Officers found a hoard of more than 37,000 indecent images of children on computers and hard drives when they raided his home.
They also found Smith kept videos of the attacks he carried out on a two-year-old girl he flew out to the Philippines to abuse in 2015.
Judge Martin Joy, sentencing, said: ‘There is no doubt you do pose a very great danger, a significant danger, to children.’
Smith, pictured left and right, who also ran a ghost-hunting group, was also found with more than 37,000 child porn images on his computer
Judge Joy branded Smith’s crimes ‘abhorrent’ and said they involved ‘significant planning’, adding: ‘You frankly admitted or even boasted of your interest in children as young as two years old.’
He said the abuse had a particularly devastating effect on one victim who later tried to kill herself.
Judge Joy added: ‘You do not see yourself as a law-breaker. You describe yourself as a paedophile with a sexual interest in children.’
Smith openly discussed his plans to travel to the Far East on social media.
Tesco security guard Timothy Smith, pictured, who was jailed after admitting abusing a child in the Philippines
He would also post pictures of himself at work in Tesco and searching for ghosts in graveyards at night as part of the Supernatural and Paranormal Investigation Team he founded.
Judge Joy expressed surprise he had been allowed out on bail and said it was ‘remarkable’ that he had been cautioned in 1995 for such an offence as sexual assault of a child under the age of four.
Wearing a green fleece, Smith showed no emotion when he was led away from the dock to the cells.
Smith, pictured, showed no emotion as he was jailed for 14 years after a judge called his crimes ‘abhorrent’
The extent of Smith’s crimes emerged after Kent Police investigated suspicious online activity at his home.
He was arrested in November last year after officers searched the property.
A stash of videos they found had a total playback time of more than two days and nine hours, police said.
Many of the thousands of images they contained were classed as category A, the most serious kind.
Smith said he would share ‘extensive volumes of illegal videos and images’ and even confessed to meeting another sex offender to hand over 45 DVDs of material.
During police interview he readily confessed to searching and downloading indecent images of children as well as visiting the Philippines to repeatedly abuse the girl and told officers it was ‘his thing’, Kent Police previously said.
Smith pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual assault of a child between August and November 2015, three counts of distributing indecent images of children, three of taking indecent images of children, six counts of making indecent images of children, and one of sexual activity with a child in August 2013.
A charge of rape of a baby under 12 months old, which Smith denied, was left to lie on file.