A nurse who filmed himself raping two unconscious women patients in a hospital accident and emergency department has been jailed for 18 years.

Andrew Hutchinson, 29, carried out the sickening attacks on the women while they were in his care at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital in 2011 and 2012, having drunk too much on nights out.

The serial pervert also recorded himself sexually assaulting two other unconscious drunk women while volunteering in the medical tent at the Wilderness Festival in Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire, in August 2013.

Because they were unconscious at the time, none of his victims knew they had been attacked until police investigating Hutchinson painstakingly pieced together what had happened.

The staff nurse's sex crimes came to light after he was arrested for voyeurism in November 2013, having been illicitly filming young girls, including one aged just nine, underneath the cubicle walls in unisex changing rooms at the White Horse Leisure Centre in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

Police searched his nearby home and found footage of the sex attacks on his phone and computer equipment as well as child pornography and "hundreds if not thousands" of other voyeuristic pictures of women impossible to trace, dating back years.

They included "upskirt" shots taken on the London Underground while Hutchinson was a volunteer at the 2012 Olympics.

Judge Ian Pringle QC, recorder of Oxford, described Hutchinson's crimes as "despicable" and told him: "When they were unconscious requiring your help and your assistance as their nurse, you raped them and you filmed it. It is impossible to conceive of a greater breach of trust in our society than that."

He ordered smartly-dressed Hutchinson, who sat with his head bowed throughout the hearing, to serve an extended licence period of seven years on top of his maximum jail term after he is released from prison.

Several of Hutchinson's victims were in court to see him sent to prison and some wept as his crimes were described, including the effect they had on them.

The footage found by police showed him orally raping the two women as well as performing other sex acts on one of them.

The court heard that the women, one of whom was an NHS worker, had no idea what he had done to them until they were contacted by police, who tracked them down by cross-referencing admission records against Hutchinson's shifts.

They had to identify themselves by viewing parts of the recordings, the court heard.

Prosecutor Matthew Walsh said that one of the women "feels pure hatred towards him", adding: "She was unconscious when he raped her. He was supposed to be looking after her but he has taken advantage of her when she was at her most vulnerable."

The second victim, in a statement read to the court, spoke of her shock, adding: "I think that what he has done is much worse than doing it in the street because I had no idea what was happening, so I had no opportunity to fight back."

This led to murmurs of agreement from the public gallery.

Mr Walsh told the judge he might struggle to "imagine a case where there was a more vulnerable victim", with footage showing how Hutchinson escalated from voyeurism to attacking women "clearly in a state of unconsciousness".

He said: "It was also clear from one glance they were in hospital and wearing white gowns. What was quite quickly apparent was that he had these women in his professional care."

Hutchinson, of Garford, near Abingdon, admitted 27 charges including rape, sexual assault, voyeurism, outraging public decency, making indecent images of children, theft of a nasal endoscope to help him take his images, and for possession of ketamine.

Hutchinson's voyeurism charges covered pictures taken inside the John Radcliffe Hospital and the leisure centre, with many female victims unidentifiable from pictures that showed them from the waist down.

Mr Walsh said police had "hundreds, if not thousands" of other images taken by Hutchinson over the course of years, but had been unable to trace those in them. Some were taken at a gym in Batley, West Yorkshire, where Hutchinson previously worked before becoming a nurse, he said.

Claire Fraser, for Hutchinson, said he had been receiving therapy for his voyeuristic urges before his arrest in December.

She produced a letter the sex attacker wrote to the court, apologising to his victims for the "distress" he had caused them, and also to fellow medics for bringing the profession into disrepute.

She said: "He hopes with the support of his family and any help he can receive, that one day he will be a productive, working member of society."