A former senior youth service manager has been jailed for downloading thousands of indecent images of children and videos of child abuse to his phone.

Stefan Cadek, 44, of no fixed address, was jailed for two years and two months at Inner London Crown Court on Monday, July 24.

Cadek, who had held a senior position in youth services at Enfield Council, admitted three charges of making indecent photographs of children and one charge of possessing extreme pornographic images, including images and videos which depict the most graphic forms of child abuse.

Detective Constable Luis Castanheira of Southwark CID said: "Cadek downloaded tens of thousands of indecent images of children of all ages and kept them on his phone to view at will.

"A large proportion of the material found in Cadek’s possession - nearly a third - were of the most extreme kind depicting serious child abuse.

"This is made all the more disturbing by Cadek's previous line of work and the position of trust he occupied."

In 2014 police began investigating a Twitter user who had uploaded 98 indecent images to the site.

In May 2016 police followed the IP address of the user which led them to search a property in Southwark where they confiscated phones, computers and devices.

Cadek was arrested at his place of work following enquiries on the same day the search took place, and was seen dropping an iPhone down a drain as he left the building.

The phone was recovered and found to contain more than 540 video files and 94,000 indecent images, with around a third of those falling in the three most serious categories.

An Enfield Council spokesman, who was not named, said: "Enfield Council is committed to the protection of children and young people and has robust policies in place to ensure this happens.

"We are appalled that Stefan Cadek committed these disgraceful crimes and we are grateful to the police for securing his prosecution.

"We take all allegations of child abuse extremely seriously and investigate immediately any allegations concerning child abuse."

The spokesman also said Cadek was suspended immediately after his arrest and dismissed for gross misconduct within a month.

The spokesman added: "An independent investigation into Cadek's recruitment and work history found no evidence of any concerns regarding any aspect of his employment and there is no evidence that he worked alone with children at any stage of his employment."

DC Castanheira also encourage anyone who has fallen victim to Cadek's crimes to contact them.

He said: "This type of offending has countless young victims whose pain and suffering endures for many years after the abuse, and this sentence reflects the seriousness of abhorrent crimes of this nature.

"It is possible that there are victims of Cadek’s that have not come forward, and we would urge those people to contact us, safe in the knowledge that you will be listened to and supported."

Anyone with information should contact DC Castainheira on Southwark’s public protection desk on 0207 232 6105.