A rapist who carried out cruel and violent abuse against four women has been given an indeterminate sentence.

Dane Lundie, 39, found vulnerable women to target over a five-year period, the High Court in Edinburgh heard.

Lundie, who denied the charges, was convicted last year of 12 offences of rape, assault, threatening behaviour and abduction between 2013 and 2018.

Judge Fiona Tait told Lundie he posed a high risk to the public and imposed an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR).

She ordered that he must serve six years in prison under the indeterminate sentence before becoming eligible to apply for release.

“Your date of release, if any, will depend on the view the Parole Board takes of the risk to public safety that you pose,” she told him.

The court heard Lundie had an offending record dating back to 2001, including for crimes of violence, and had been jailed previously.

Lundie attacked the four women while he was living in Perth and Kinross.

One 30-year-old woman told the court he beat her and pulled her hair out, used dressing gown belts to tie her up, held a knife to her throat and threatened to set her on fire.

She said: “I thought he was going to kill me.”

‘He was into the dark web’

The woman described Lundie as “very, very aggressive” and “very controlling”.

She said that after he sexually assaulted her he was “laughing about it”.

“I was just crying. I felt disgusted and sad,” she added.

A second woman was subjected to repeated sex and choking attacks in Perth.

Lundie targeted two further victims in 2018, after he moved to Kinross.

One woman, aged 24, said Lundie was supplying her with heroin, valium, cocaine and crack cocaine, but began raping her when she was sleeping and she suspected he was spiking her hot drinks.

She told the court: “I would wake up sore.”

She said she thought Lundie was viewing “banned” sex videos, adding: “He was into weird stuff, like the dark web.”

Defending Lundie, advocate Iain Paterson urged the judge to deal with him by imposing a determinate sentence of a period in custody followed by supervision in the community.

“It is quite clear he is suffering from depression and sees little hope for the future because of the process that has taken place since his conviction,” he said.

He said English sentences which were similar to OLRs were no longer used as they were seen as “a sentence of no hope”.

Lundie was told he would be placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.

(Source: BBC)