A self-styled writer and photographer – caught with an underage girl in bushes in Ashford – claimed he was researching a new book.

But when police looked at the pictures he had been taking they discovered the innocent victim had been duped.

Prosecutor Jim Harvey told Canterbury Crown Court how Warren Henderson had been pointing his camera down the child’s top.

Now Henderson, of Glebe Close, Smarden has been jailed for three years after admitting six offences of taking indecent photographs and possessing nearly 18,000 illegal photographs of children.

Mr Harvey said the incident in Victoria Park, Ashford had been witnessed by other people who became concerned that he had bought a feather boa, jewels, fairy lights and glitter for the photoshoot.

Henderson claimed he had written a book and was taking innocent photographs – but when police examined them, they were regarded as indecent.

Guy Wyatt, defending, said: “The girl never took off any clothes and was photographed in the clothes she wore to and fro the park.

“Two of the images are regarded as indecent because of the point of focus rather than the removal; of any clothes.”

He added: “The defendant says when he took the pictures, he believed he wasn’t doing anything wrong. But concedes in retrospect his taste for sexual images of that kind had blinded him to the fact he did wrong.

“He now wishes he hadn’t done what he did and wishes he didn’t have the sexual interest that he has and now wishes to mend his ways.”

Judge James O’Mahony told Henderson, who has previous convictions for sex offences, he had been grooming the child.

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