A SERIAL rapist is facing a prison sentence after he was found guilty of a string of sex attacks.

Steven Stalley, 31, carried out the sickening catalogue of abuse at various addresses in Renfrew, Paisley and Glasgow between March 2007 and March 2018.

On one occasion, he told a sobbing victim: "You'll enjoy it eventually.”

Stalley, of Paisley, was found guilty at the High Court in Glasgow of raping three women and then sending two of them abusive texts.

He was also convicted of sexually assaulting another woman.

Stalley stalked a further nine women by phone after demanding their mobile numbers during brief encounters in the street or on buses.

He would then text and call the women for months, becoming more and more threatening.

In one voicemail message, he warned his victim: “I'm gonnae slit your throat.”

Judge Tom Hughes told Stalley his behaviour "will never be tolerated by the courts."

He added: “You approached young women when they were alone and forced them to give you their phone numbers.

“You persisted in making their lives a misery. They had to block your number and change their lifestyles. They were genuinely living in fear.

“Women should not have to be subjected to this course of conduct.”

Stalley chatted to one of his victims, who was drunk, outside a nightclub and persuaded her to let him and two friends go back to her house.

The woman put her pyjamas on over her clothes and went to bed, believing all three men had left.

However, Stalley had hidden himself and, as she slept, stripped her naked and then raped her.

The woman told the court that Stalley had tied her dog to a radiator during the attack.

Another woman told how she wept before, during and after being raped by Stalley.

Prosecutor Murdoch McTaggart said: “Mr Stalley was in all cases asserting his dominance over his victims. He had sex with them when they said no. He badgered them with texts. He was belittling and controlling towards them.

“It didn't matter if any victim who he raped said no, he was having sex anyway. If a woman said she did not want contact with the accused, she was bombarded with texts."

One victim told of going out with a friend and being ordered back home by Stalley, only to find him having sex with another woman in the common close.

In evidence, Stalley said: “The sex was always 100 per cent consensual. I didn't rape anyone.”

He also denied bombarding five victims with threatening and abusive texts and voicemails, although he pled guilty to stalking another six women by phone.

The court heard that, whenever Stalley met a woman he was interested in sexually, he would demand her phone number after chatting for a while.

He would ensure he hadn't been given a false number by testing it while the woman was there, to make sure it rang when he called.

Judge Hughes ordered a background report and a risk assessment of the danger Stalley poses to women and deferred sentence until next month.

Defence QC Brian McConnachie will give his plea in mitigation then.