A serial abuser who raped two victims was jailed for eight years today after previously being cleared of sex attacks on other women in England.

Alan Radcliffe (29) was convicted of a string of charges including assault, rape and making threats against women following a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh last month.

A judge told him today (Tuesday 25 March), “You have been found guilty by the verdict of the jury of a number of serious offences against females.” Lord Kinclaven said, “Clearly there is no alternative to a significant custodial sentence. No other method of dealing with you is appropriate.” The judge said Radcliffe had “a significant record” although only one previous conviction was for assault, when he was jailed at Cambridge Crown Court despite being acquitted on three rape charges.

Lord Kinclaven also ordered that Radcliffe should be on supervision for a further year when he can be returned to prison if he breaches conditions of his release on licence.

During his latest trial one of four woman victims told the High Court in Edinburgh that Radcliffe told her he had been in the army and had just come back from a tour.

She said, “I think it was Afghanistan. He made out he had been in for quite a while.” After Radcliffe was found guilty of the offences advocate depute Richard Goddard said Radcliffe had been in the army for about nine months and did not complete his basic training and was not deployed abroad.

The woman said that within weeks she noticed angry outbursts from him and temper. She said it would be “just an angry expression on his face and white knuckles”.

She said he pushed her and she fell into a wardrobe during one incident in 2004 at a house in Kincardine.

During a subsequent assault she was visiting her bed-ridden grandmother in Livingston when he wanted money.

She ended up on a couch and he was leaning on her punching her in the ribs.

“I don’t know why he stopped. He got up and left and I lay there and cried,” she said.

Another woman was raped by the chef at a house in Airth in 2005 when he squeezed her neck restricting her breathing.

During sex he had applied pressure to her neck. The woman said, “I tried to say stop but with the pressure on my throat I couldn’t say anything.” Radcliffe’s defence counsel Brian McConnachie QC said that she had not considered at any stage that it was rape.

But the woman responded, “I knew it wasn’t right. I said no and said stop. I told him to stop.” The woman told police that during the incident he began to lean on her neck and put pressure on to the point where she could hardly breath.

“I was pushing him away. I tried to speak. He must have known I couldn’t breathe,” she said.

Radcliffe also assaulted the woman by pushing her onto a couch and brandishing a knife.

He raped another woman in 2012 at a house in Perth when he seized her by the hair and pushed her head into a pillow.

Mr Goddard said that Radcliffe had lived at a number of addresses but was latterly staying in Carlisle. He said he had previously been sentenced to 21 months for assault in England following his trial in Cambridge.

Radcliffe had stood trial in Scotland after denying the latest series of charges, but was found guilty of two rapes, three assaults and two charges of uttering threats of violence.

Mr McConnachie said Radcliffe had been brought up in a household which appeared to have had “significant problems with regards to domestic violence between his mother and step-father and indeed violence towards him”. He was taken into care at about the age of 13.

The defence counsel said that there was nothing in Radcliffe’s criminal record of the gravity of the rape offences he now stood convicted of. He added, “He maintains, in effect, that the jury got it wrong.” “He was in the Army. He was unfortunately injured at an early stage in his career and was medically discharged,” said the defence counsel.

Radcliffe was placed on the sex offenders’ register.