A 'LONELY' former chairman of a Worcester City FC supporters group had hundreds of 'disgusting' animal porn images on his mobile phone.

Philip Gardiner admitted possession of 208 extreme pornographic images which all concerned bestiality and was sentenced at Worcester Crown Court on Monday, with the judge describing the case as a 'humiliation'.

Amanda O'Mara, prosecuting, said Gardiner, 55, had sent a 28-second movie involving a dog and an adult female to a man in Wales.

“That movie had been sent to a male in Wales from the defendant’s IP address” she said.

As a result Gardiner, of Christine Avenue, Rushwick, near Worcester, was identified and his mobile phone examined by police where they discovered the 208 images.

However, the court heard there was no evidence he was distributing images other than the one referred to.

Miss O’Mara said Gardiner was a lonely man whose parents had passed away and he chatted with other adults online.

“He received one image of an explicit nature. He said he liked it and then continued to download more,” she said.

Gardiner told police that the other inaccessible images were sent to him without him requesting them and he deleted them.

Miss O’Mara said the images involved dogs, horses and adult women.

Gardiner has one set of previous convictions for three offences of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour in public from 2000.

Emily Heggadon, for Gardiner, said: “He’s a rather lonely man and rather reclusive.”

She told the court he worked as a self-employed gardener with a solid client base and a small circle of friends.

“He has recently started a relationship with a fellow Worcester City fan and that has been going well," she said.

Gardiner had not known possession of these types of images was a criminal offence and he 'equated it with adult pornography', Miss Heggadon told the court.

However, she said he had taken the offences 'very seriously.'

Gardiner was also able to supply character references and his employers had taken the trouble to write in support of him because they had 'great esteem' for him.

He has not lost a single client despite him disclosing the offences, she said.

Judge Robert Juckes QC said: "I can well understand why you have been so worried about your court appearance today. It is, of course, humiliation for you."

However, he said the case was strictly limited to simple possession of a relatively small (by the standards of such cases) number of images.

The maximum sentence he could have imposed, before credit for his guilty plea, was a prison sentence of two years but he said the case did not cross the custody threshold and it would be wrong in principle to pass a custodial sentence.

"I recognise that most people find this kind of pornography disgusting," he said.

But the judge said such a case did not fall into the same bracket as indecent images of children.

He sentenced Gardiner to a 12-month community order with 12 rehabilitation activity requirement days.

Judge Juckes told Gardiner that since the offence 'you have done everything you could to help yourself'.

Gardiner was ordered to pay £425 costs and an £85 victim surcharge.

The judge made an order that the mobile phone containing the images be destroyed.

The court heard the images came to light following an investigation into indecent images of children by police in Wales ¬– though no such images were found on any of Gardiner's devices.

Gardiner was convicted of the offence at the magistrates court on July 18.

He declined to comment when contacted by the Worcester News.

The group that Gardiner ran was not connected to the Worcester City Supporters’ Trust and was predominantly for arranging travel to matches.