THE brother of the man known as the "pot-bellied rapist" has been convicted of a string of sex attacks.
Gavin Acey is the brother of Michael Acey, the man brought to justice last year by Hull's cold case team for raping a ten-year-old girl near an old railway line in east Hull in April 1984.
He is also the brother of Christine Acey, the victim of a notorious Hull murder who was hit with a hammer 32 times by a spurned lover in 1988.
Now, Gavin Acey, 48, has been convicted by a jury at Hull Crown Court of historic sex attacks dating back more than 20 years.
Describing Acey as "extremely brutish" and "violent", Judge Mark Bury jailed him for ten and a half years for rape, sexual assault, attempted rape and three indecent assaults.
Hull Crown Court heard Acey tied one woman up and tortured her, burning her with a red-hot metal spoon before raping her in a caravan in Hornsea.
Prosecutor Caroline Wiggin described him as a bully who terrified his victim.
She said: "He is arrogant and unpleasant. She was frightened of this man. It was to punish her that she was tied up."
He also fractured her ribs.
Acey told the police he placed the hot spoon on her because it was "funny" and was "just a thing to do". Acey, of Holderness Road, east Hull, raped and sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl while babysitting for her while her mother was at bingo.
He spied on her through a door and walked in when she was having a bath to assault her.
She fled to her room and barricaded herself in but Acey told her: "If you don't do this, I will hurt your mother."
He later raped her and, on another occasion, he tried to rape her but she screamed and got away.
Judge Bury told Acey: "It was a gross breach of trust and you raped her. The behaviour was accompanied by you making threats to her that you would hurt her mother if she told anyone.
"You have blighted her life. She has flashbacks about what you did to her and you showed no remorse."
Another child made a complaint about him in 1995 but that was withdrawn. Acey has been placed on the sex offenders register for life and banned from working with children.
Detective Constable Jo Durham said: "Acey humiliated and abused his victims in the worst possible way before bullying them and frightening them into staying quiet about his actions.
"I hope they can now move on with their lives."
Acey was a pub landlord in the city and formerly ran the Bank Harbour, in Beverley Road, Hull, the Rampant Horse in Orchard Park and the Flowerpot in Bilton in the 1990s, although he has no connection with the pubs now.
At the same time as Acey was attacking his victims, his brother was doing the same.
Michael Acey, now 50, was high on drugs when he grabbed a ten-year-old girl in April 1984, dragged her into bushes near Bilsdale Grove, east Hull, and threatened to kill her before raping her.
As he warned her not to move, he told her she could be pregnant before fleeing. The attack left the little girl traumatised, frightened of the dark and terrified of everyone who passed by her in the street.
For years, she kept her bedroom light on, afraid he would return to hurt her. Even now and a mother herself, Michael Acey's victim is still terrified to walk past strangers in the street.
Detectives spent almost 30 years hunting the man his victim described as the "pot-bellied rapist".
It was only when Humberside Police's cold case team examined DNA from the crime scene that they got a hit on the DNA database and arrested him.
He was finally jailed for ten years last year after pleading guilty to rape.
