An Essex man who was banned by a court from contacting his disabled mother let himself into her house and acted like a “sloth” after taking over her living room, a court has heard.

Dennis Hooper lay around smoking and drinking and his mother was confined to her bedroom for four days because she was frightened of him, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

She ventured into her living room and kitchen after hearing him going into a bedroom but he returned after hearing her moving around and she eventually called the police after he fell asleep with a lit cigarette in his mouth.

Jailing Hooper for 15 months, Judge Martyn Levett said his mother had become "a prisoner in her bedroom" for four days after he moved back in to her home in breach of the restraining order.

He said Hooper had previous convictions for battery on people close to him such as his parents and a girlfriend.

Judge Levett made an indefinite restraining order banning Hooper from contacting his mother or going to her home in Tower Road, Clacton-on-Sea.

Hooper, of no fixed address, admitted breaching a restraining order banning him from going to his mother's home on January 6.