Sisters' sex attacker gets life

Tweed, 48, is due to be sentenced on Tuesday

A man has been sentenced to life after admitting decades of sexual abuse against a woman and her older sister.

The woman increased her weight by nearly 10 stone to repel Peter Tweed, the court was told.

After the ploy failed the woman, who is in her 30s, told police about the way she - and her sister - had been abused by Peter Tweed from the mid 1970s.

Tweed, 48, of Ramsey, Cambs, who admitted 21 offences, was sentenced by Peterborough Crown Court on Tuesday.

'Violent sexual predator'

Prosecutor William Redgrave said Tweed was a "bullying, controlling, violent sexual predator" who put tape around the woman's door frame so he would know if she had gone out while he was away.

"(The woman) became a sexual plaything. In effect a puppet for Peter Tweed to act out his increasingly unpleasant charades," he added.

The woman and her sister were daughters of a friend of Tweed, the court was told.

The abuse had started when the woman was aged around eight and her sister around 12 and continued until the last few years.

Prosecutor William Redgrave said the woman's sister moved away when she was in her late teens.

But the woman had remained under the control of Tweed into her mid 30s.

Mr Redgrave added: "She put on more and more weight in the hope that it would stop Peter Tweed being interested in her sexually.

"By 2002 - after she had weighed nine stones when she was a teenager - she had gone up to 19-and-a-half stones."