A bank worker was sacked after receiving pornographic e-mails, a tribunal heard.

Father-of-three Chris Heming-way, 50, of Clayton, Bradford, was dismissed from his job as a senior quality adviser at Halifax Bank on August 21 this year, after bosses discovered he had used his laptop computer to access hard core pornographic Internet sites at his Dawson's Corner office in Pudsey.

But at the Leeds tribunal yesterday, Nasreen Al Gafoor, acting on behalf of Mr Hemingway, said he had acted naively by asking to be sent e-mails from two Internet adult dating websites, but that he had not intended to acquire pornographic pictures.

Mr Hemingway, who wants to be reinstated to his job, is claiming wrongful dismissal, saying he was harshly treated.

But Nicholas Waddington, the bank's programme manager who had taken the decision to sack Mr Hemingway, said he had not been nave.

He said Mr Hemingway had attempted to register with e-mail services on six occasions during two days in June and had received 78 e-mails as a result.

Mr Waddington, who said he had not seen the pictures downloaded by Mr Hemingway, added: "I thought that due to the seriousness of the actions there was no other course open to me.

"At least one of the images described to me had information inferring that there was a 14 or 15-year-old girl having sex with an adult man and I felt that that was too serious to be given a second chance. I don't believe that he didn't know what he was doing."

Mr Waddington said that other pictures had come with a description involving rape.

But Miss Gafoor said that Mr Hemingway had been shocked by some of the pictures he had been sent and had tried on two occasions to cancel the e-mail services.

On the websites he had accessed, other themes included pen pals, romance and classified ads and Mr Hemingway had no control over the type of messages he had been sent, the tribunal was told.

Miss Gafoor added that Mr Hemingway had been under considerable personal stress at the time of the incident and regretted what had happened.

The hearing continues.

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