POLICE have failed in a legal bid to secure an anti-social behaviour order against a Kidderminster man said to have flaunted himself in his back garden and cavorted around his bedroom clad only in a black thong.

Malcolm Leonard Boorman, of Church Street, was ordered by Kidderminster magistrates in September 2004 to pay a £100 fine after he admitted harassing two female neighbours.

He had been prosecuted over claims that he paraded around his garden with his underwear "deliberately exposed".

West Mercia Constabulary applied last December for an ASBO on the strength of his alleged obscene behaviour at his rear bedroom window.

The magistrates refused the police request, however, concluding they were not satisfied "beyond reasonable doubt" that he had acted "in a manner likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress".

They found that part of the evidence relied on by the prosecution dated back more than six months and should, therefore, be excluded from the hearing.

Lawyers for West Mercia Constabulary challenged the magistrates' decision to refuse the ASBO at London's High Court on Wednesday last week.

Mr Justice Calvert-Smith accepted police arguments that evidence outside the six-month timescale could have been admitted by the magistrates.

The judge, nevertheless, rejected the police bid to have the case sent back to the magistrates court for a fresh hearing, observing that the behaviour complained of was "at the bottom end of the scale in terms of anti-social behaviour".

He said the case had raised doubts about the admissibility of some of the prosecution evidence, which consisted of video footage surreptitiously taken by the women victims, who used a long-range lens to film Boorman inside his own home.

The three women at the sharp end of Boorman's antics - Belinda Jones, Wendy Booker and Gillian Jackson - gave evidence of Boorman "constantly peering from behind his curtain" while clad in the same black thong.

Mrs Jackson's daughter had complained about Boorman "staring at her" and said she could not sleep at night due to her fear of him. She added Boorman had also been seen in his garden peering through a gap in the fence.

Belinda Jones said she had felt "powerless and angry" at Boorman's behaviour.

Boorman's lawyers argued that all that could be shown since the date of his guilty plea was a "gross invasion of his privacy" by the women complainants.

There was, therefore, no basis for imposing an ASBO, they insisted.