A DISABLED man was tortured by a teenage neighbour and a gang of his friends who broke into his home through a boarded-up window.

The friends - branded "appalling" by a judge at Teesside Crown Court today - beat the wheelchair-bound cerebral palsy sufferer with sticks.

They also stubbed a cigarette out on his body, sprayed an engine lubricant in his eyes and covered him in human excrement.

At one point, the 30-year-old victim was tipped from his wheelchair while his tormentors turned off the lights so he could not see.

A court heard how the friends from Hartlepool filmed some of their attacks on David Tupman on a mobile phone so they could watch them again.

Three teenagers were yesterday locked up after they admitted burglary, common assault, harassment and administering a noxious substance.

A fourth was given a two-year supervision order with intensive surveillance after he pleaded guilty to all the charges except harassment.

Judge George Moorhouse told them: "It seems you took some weird satisfaction or fun from treating this man in the way that you did.

"Anyone reading about this case won't be able to believe it because the way you conducted yourselves on that night was absolutely appalling."

Prosecutor Ian West described Mr Tupman's ordeal which lasted several hours on January 27 last year, as "torment and torture".

He said the friends targeted him "for no better reason than their own amusement" or "because there was nothing worth watching on television".

Three of the gang had been responsible for other incidents of harassment at Mr Tupman's home in Blakelock Gardens between August 2005 and last January.

Steven Bruce, 19, of Blakelock Gardens, was sent to a young offenders institution for eight months, and his brother, Liam, 16, of Colenso Street was given an 18-month detention and training order.

Daniel Burnside, 16, of Pine Grove was given a 12-month detention and training order, and Stuart Neesam, 15, of Waverley Terrace, was given the community sentence.

Defence barristers for the four said they each brought out the worst in one another, and were ashamed and remorseful for what they had done.