A GUILT-RACKED former carer rang police to confess to a catalogue of sexual and physical assaults committed while working at homes for vulnerable adults.

Less than two months after Michael Joseph Mazzetti was dismissed from his job with a company which ran care homes in County Durham for inappropriate behaviour with a resident, he rang to arrange to attend a police station.

Durham Crown Court heard that he told the operator he had pushed and intimidated one female resident, physically abused another and sexually abused a third woman in his care.

Richard Bennett, prosecuting, said on arrival at the station on December 1 last year, he was formally arrested and in interview revealed he had abused and assaulted vulnerable adults.

“He told police he couldn’t live with it anymore and decided to hand himself in,” he said.

Mr Bennett said Mazzetti outlined how he sexually abused one female resident on two occasions.

Once was while assisting her in a bathroom and the other was in her bedroom, although it was unclear if she was aware of what he was doing.

Mr Bennett said: “He was asked how he got to the point he could do something like that to the resident and he replied: ‘I don’t know’.

“He said ‘I’m a beast - it’s hard to admit.”

Mazzetti told police the physical abuse took place after he moved to work in another residential home, pushing and intimidating one woman, poking a finger in her face and “hissing” at her.

He grabbed another woman by the throat and also placed a pillow over her face.

Mr Bennett said that Mazzetti told police he found both women difficult to deal with, but as they were “non-verbal” they were unable to tell anyone what had taken place.

“The defendant confirmed this was his first role in care and he accepted none of the victims had the mental capacity to consent to his behaviour,” he said.

Mazzetti, 44, now of no fixed abode, admitted a total of eight counts of sexual and physical abuse relating to the three vulnerable women.

Paul Cleasby, mitigating, said it was only because Mazzetti decided to “come clean” and confess to his actions that anyone became aware of what had taken place.

Jailing him for eight years, Judge Christopher Prince also made Mazzetti subject to a sexual offences prevention order, restricting his future activities, and registration as a sex offender, both for life.