A police misconduct panel has retired to consider its decision in the case of a former officer accused of having sex with a vulnerable woman while on duty.

Ex-sergeant Lee Cocking, 41, denies breaching standards of professional behaviour for police officers in relation to honesty and integrity and discreditable conduct.

The married father of two is alleged to have taken advantage of a drunken woman who was ejected from Skinny Dippers night spot in Weston-super-Mare and he offered to give her a lift home in his unmarked constabulary car.

Accompanied by his wife during the two-week misconduct hearing at Avon & Somerset Police headquarters in Portishead, Mr Cocking, of Cheddar, has insisted he was the victim of a sexual assault by the woman in the vehicle in the early hours of Christmas Eve, 2017.

He told how he felt "numb" and "complete panic" when the woman, described by his barrister Ray Tully as a "sexual predator", took down her trousers and underwear, jumped across from the front passenger seat, straddled him and attempted to have sex.

The former officer, who retired from the force last month on medical grounds, has been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, which he suffered after attending a tragic road collision in 2015 which left a seven-year-old girl dead.

He is also accused of lying to a custody sergeant about his medical history.

Mr Cocking was acquitted of a criminal charge of misconduct in a public office by a jury at Gloucester Crown Court last year over the same incident.

If the panel decides he breached standards of professional behaviour, they can either order no further action or rule that if he had still been a serving police officer, he would have been dismissed.

The hearing is set to resume at 2pm on Friday (August 26).