A SEXUAL predator who drunkenly molested seven women in a campaign of domestic abuse spanning nearly three decades faces spending most of the rest of his life in prison.

Trial Judge Lord Mulholland branded Michael Gray a “danger to women” and called for a risk assessment with a view to placing him on an Order for Lifelong Restriction which will see him subject to imprisonment and supervision for the rest of his life.

Self confessed alcoholic Gray, 50, who drank up to four 1litre bottles of cider a day was described as an “opportunist" who sexually assaulted his victims while they slept and used them as punchbags when they were awake.

He carried out perverted attacks on one former partner subjecting her to degrading sexual assaults using a pool cue and an Irn Bru bottle.

He also forced two of the women he met to engage in a lesbian threesome with him and compelled both of them to have sex with other men while he watched.

His “trademark” form of violence was putting his victims’ lives at risk by compressing their throats with his hands or, on one occasion, with the belt from a bathrobe, the jury heard.

At the end of a six-day trial, at the High Court in Livingston, jurors on Monday returned unanimous verdicts finding Gray, who also goes by the surname Banks, guilty of 18 charges.

Gray, of Adamson Road, Lochgelly, had denied 10 rapes, three indecent assaults, three assaults to danger of life and a knife attack which resulted in the victim needing 11 stitches in a wound in her hand.

The jury took just two hours to convict the unemployed former fish farm worker of committing the offences at addresses across Fife between January 1987 and January 2016.

Lord Mulholland ordered that Gray’s name be notified to Scottish Ministers under Protection of Vulnerable Groups laws and added his name to the sex offenders’ register.

He told the accused: “You have been convicted of an appalling catalogue violence and sexual assaults on seven women and you’ve been convicted of raping four women.

“You clearly have a problem with alcohol but that’s no excuse for your actions.

“You did what you wanted to these women when you wanted and you treated them as punchbags and objects for your sexual gratification.

“You are clearly a danger to women and I have to assess whether an order for lifelong restriction is required to protect the public – particularly women – from you.”

He told Gray he would pass sentence on January 11 after background reports had been prepared.