A MAN has been caught keeping pornographic pictures of children on his mobile phone.

Ian Byrne, 39, had 11 indecent images of children stored the phone that he had downloaded from an adult service chatline, Oxford Crown Court heard today.

The photos were found by his former landlord who alerted police.

Byrne, of Perry's Road, Stanford in the Vale, was given a three-year community order after admitting 11 counts of possessing indecent photos of children.

Cathy Olliver, prosecuting, added: "All these images of girls were found on his mobile phone, which makes this case slightly unusual."

The pictures were discovered when Byrne's landlord looked through his phone and found a video titled "11-year-old", Miss Olliver said.

He called the police, who seized the phone. Serena Palastrand, defending, said: "He is a man genuinely embarrassed by what he has done."

She told the court Byrne joined an Internet chatroom on his mobile phone to text flirty messages, that were billed to his O2 pay-as-you-go phone.

She added: "He engaged in adult chat by text. It was flirting with an adult flavour, it was of a rude nature, but just flirting.

"At some point they started sending him photographs. It started off as adults, then photographs of children.

"He didn't show or distribute images and wasn't responsible for the initial images."

The 11 texts were received between April and June last year but police did not find the video stored on the phone, Ms Palastrand added.

Three of the images were level four, which is the second worst category.

Judge Tom Corrie said: "Whatever level these images were, these children had been exploited and may well have even suffered.

"Your protestation you had no sexual interest in looking at it is simply not convincing, and you are deluding yourself if you say that you looked only out of interest."

Byrne, a machine plant operator, was put on the sex offenders' register for five years, given a three-year supervision order with sex offender treatment programme and ordered to pay £250 costs.

Det Sgt Duncan Wynn, of the High Tech Crime Unit, said: "This is a growing concern.

"We are finding more of the criminal fraternity using the technological advances in wireless Internet on mobile phones to obtain and distribute images because they believe it is difficult to trace.

"But we have the technology and support of the mobile phone networks to track them down."