10-year Asbo on teacher who terrorised his neighbours with baseball bat....and toilet paper

Magistrates delivered the marathon sentence after hearing how 58 - year- old Dominic McGrath was responsible for hundreds of incidents of intimidation.

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The divorcee walked around in a balaclava, put a picture of a man with a gun in his window and threatened one neighbour with a baseball bat.

He played loud music, whistled insulting tunes at neighbours and waved toilet rolls around, apparently implying they were "sh**s".

McGrath bought a second car simply to park outside neighbours' houses to annoy them, and once shouted and gesticulated at residents as they filed past in a funeral cortege.

The order was imposed by magistrates in Basildon, Essex, after McGrath was found guilty at an earlier hearing of two charges of harassment and one of using threatening words or behaviour.

Irish-born McGrath, a private music teacher, moved to Wickford, Essex, nine years ago when he followed his former wife of 23 years to the area.

Problems began when the father-of-one was told to stop parking his car outside her nearby house and he switched his attention to neighbours.

Residents of his quiet cul-de-sac believe they incurred his wrath after complaining to the council about noise from his house.

One of the worst affected was Gloria Willats, 60, who has a heart condition and arthritis. McGrath claimed the dispute began because the mother-of-one wouldn't keep her dog quiet when he was marking students' papers.

He made rude gestures towards her, drove his car near her at speed - sometimes with toilet paper hanging out of the windows - and barked at her seven-year-old white Maltese terrier, Billy, to make it bark back.

He also whistled "Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to work we go", from the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to mock the fact that she was unemployed.

Prosecutor Lorraine Webb said: "She felt almost a prisoner in her own home. He intimidated her effectively in any way he could."

She added: "It was non-stop. Whilst all these taken individually would have been quite innocuous the scale, the time aspect and the fact this was continual had the effect of a dripping tap."

The conditions of the Asbo include a ban on displaying the balaclava and toilet paper in his house or car, singing, humming or whistling songs in a derisory manner and approaching or speaking to around half a dozen neighbours and their families.

He has also been banned from parking in the road unless he is in his own driveway and making "unnecessary noise". Magistrates-gave him a six-month suspended prison sentence, 150 hours' community service and fines and costs totalling £1,655.

Chairman of the bench Alan Payne said: "We've never heard a case where so much stress was caused to so many people."

McGrath claimed his neighbours had told a "pack of lies" in court. But he said he would obey the Asbo, adding: "The only object of what I did was to protest in an orderly manner."