AN obsessed stalker has been jailed after he subjected his estranged partner to weeks of hounding.

Former Royal Navy sailor Thomas Lee-Everton defied a ban on going to his old family home in Dawlish and pestered his ex with scores of calls, e-mails and voicemails.

He was arrested and bailed three times and each time he broke bail conditions and the terms of a restraining order by contacting her again, leaving her stressed and so fearful that she fled her home and went to live with her mother.

Lee-Everton was not deterred and carried on tracking her until he was finally arrested at her home last month. He admitted to police he was ‘fixated and obsessed’.

He even sent her a video of them having sex which he had recorded without her knowledge and which he hinted he had sent on to a friend.

A Judge at Exeter Crown Court described him as self-pitying, manipulative and an emotional blackmailer as he sent him to prison.

Transport engineer Lee-Everton, aged 30, of Punchards Down, Follaton, near Totnes, admitted two counts of stalking and three of breaking a restraining order and was jailed for 12 months by Judge David Evans at Exeter Crown Court.

He was banned from contacting his ex-partner or going to Dawlish under a new restraining order.

The judge told him: 'The restraining order was intended to prevent you exercising any hold over her such that she would find it difficult to assert herself in the face of your persistence.

'You made a constant stream of wholly unwanted phone calls and e-mails and made unwanted and unannounced visits to her, including at her mother’s address. You effectively limited her psychological breathing space.

'You made manipulative references to what might happen to you and stalked her, causing her serious alarm and distress. Your main concern was sexual jealousy and control. She was entitled to do what she wanted and you were not entitled to control her at all.

'Your messages went from being self-pitying through emotional blackmail to being rude and abusive. It constituted the plainest domestic abuse against your former partner.'

Mr Paul Grumbar, prosecuting, said Lee-Everton and his partner had been in a relationship for several years until they broke up in 2021 and a restraining order was made.

There was some further contact but she ended the relationship totally in March this year and called the police on March 30 when Lee-Everton turned up at her home and would not leave.

He bombarded her with calls and e-mails before and after being arrested that day and went on to be arrested twice more in the next seven weeks. He was remanded in custody after admitting he was obsessed and fixated.

Mr Paul Dentith, defending, said Lee-Everton had a good service record in the Royal Navy and was a hard working man with a good job. He had never been violent and now accepts his actions were wrong.

He said Lee-Everton was drinking heavily when he committed the offences and could not remember what he did on some occasions.

He says he ‘lost his head’.