A nursery worker locked up for sex crimes against children is due to be released from prison following a Parole Board review.

Vanessa George, 49, who worked at Little Ted’s Nursery, in Plymouth, was sentenced to serve a minimum of seven years after taking photographs on her phone of her abusing toddlers.

She was recommended for release from prison by the Parole Board after members were satisfied she no longer posed a significant risk to the public, PA understands, although it is unclear when she will be freed.

During her 2009 sentencing Mr Justice John Royce told her she had “plumbed new depths of depravity” by abusing those in her care.

The “shockwaves” of her maltreatment of babies and toddlers would be felt in every one of the country’s nursery schools, he added.

Although the self-styled “paedo whore mum” has named some victims, George was accused of deliberately hiding information that would properly pinpoint those in the pictures she took.

Sentencing her to an indeterminate sentence at Bristol Crown Court the judge said her trading of abuse images with two other paedophiles was “wicked, cold, calculated, repeated offending which for any decent person defies belief”.

Nursery child abuse case
Vanessa George on the phone to her lawyer while in police custody in Plymouth (Devon and Cornwall Police/PA)

“It would be quite wrong for the Crown to tell parents that their child had been abused if in fact that was not the case,” he said.

“I find it difficult to accept that she is genuinely not in a position to provide more information than she has.”

He added: “The photographs of children you were abusing did not show their faces.

“Many parents would like to have known. Some would prefer not to have known. Both positions are entirely understandable.

“I make it clear that the revelation of names is not a mitigating factor.

“It is what anyone with a drop of decency would have done at an early stage, certainly if there was genuine remorse.”

He added: “Parents have to live with the memory of you coming out with a smile on your face to hand back their child, when you may well have been doing unspeakable things to that child.”

Child protection officers visited 180 children thought to have had contact with George, who admitted taking up to eight pictures a day while on duty.

Staff at Little Ted’s said they felt “betrayed” by George’s actions and one said that “a lifetime of childcare had been ruined by Vanessa’s actions”.