A CROSSHOUSE hospital worker has been jailed after being caught with a haul of child sex abuse and bestiality images.

Former Three Towns resident Christopher Anderson had access to thousands of patients’ personal details and medical records through his job in the records department at the hospital, and was found with more than 5,000 images of children as young as two-years-old being abused.

He appeared at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court last week and was sentenced to 22 months imprisonment and placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for 10 years. The 29-year-old was also caught with images of adults engaged in sex acts with dogs after police raided his home in Irvine.

Twisted Anderson also kept thousands of images on his phone – and even carried two USB drives with him crammed full of abuse files. He was arrested at his work and taken to the police station to be questioned, where officers discovered the files were just the tip of the iceberg due to his mobile phone and his memory sticks.

The details emerged when Anderson appeared in the dock at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court last month to plead guilty over his sordid stash. He pleaded guilty to three charges - making child abuse images, possessing the illicit files, and being in possession of “extreme pornographic material” by having bestiality files, between March 2012 and September last year.

He admitted his guilt after the date he began making and possessing the files was changed from March 2004 – when he was 14.

Procurator Fiscal Depute Peter Moyes said officers found a total of 4,957 still images and 195 films across the four devices, many of which were at the most extreme level.

Sheriff Watson told Anderson: “The number and categorisation of the images is very serious, some related to children as young as two. In my view there’s no alternative but to send you to prison.”

He also made him the subject of a five-year-long Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO). It requires him to inform Police Scotland’s National Offender Management Unit about all his internet-abled devices, give them his usernames and passwords and bans him from deleting or altering his internet history.

He is banned from having any contact with anyone under 17 and has to tell police if he has a relationship or makes friends with someone who has a child aged 17 or under.

PatriciaLeiser, Human Resources Director for NHS Ayrshire and Arran, said: “On being alerted to this issue, we can confirm we took immediate action and this individual no longer works for NHS Ayrshire & Arran.”