A 'sickening catalogue' of offences against two young boys led to a Pembrokeshire man being gaoled last week.

Fifty-five-year-old Christopher Flavin, a former Bristol schoolteacher, but lately of Manorbier, abused the boys while a coach and chairman at Gordano Valley Giants Football Club in Portishead. The offences only came to a light following a chance meeting between the two victims in a nightclub some years after the assaults had taken place.

Bristol Crown Court heard that Flavin, a married father-of-two, had used his position as a coach to spend time alone with the boys. One of the victims claimed that from the time he was 10 until he was 13, there had been repeated sexual contact between them, sometimes as often as four times a week.

Sentencing Flavin to six years and nine months on Friday, Judge Julian Lambert said he was guilty of a "gross breach of trust".

"From a very early age, you took these two young boys for your perverted sexual pleasure," he said. "You were in a position of trust, they looked to you as a figure who might help them further their sporting careers.

"By abusing children of that age, you stole part of their childhood, something that they can never get back."

Flavin, now a grandfather, had initially denied the charges, but just before the trial was due to begin in June this year, he pleaded guilty.

Brendon Moorhouse, mitigating, said Flavin, who had left the football club more than eight years ago, was severely depressed.