AN EX-STEELWORKER said to have a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde personality was jailed for ten years for carrying out sex attacks on a teenager and a woman.

Carl Ball, aged 30, was told by Judge David Wyn Morgan: "You subjected a teenager to persistent acts of sexual degradation.

"You treated her as yours to use for your own sexual gratification. It was appalling." At the Cardiff crown court case yesterday, it was said Ball had treated the other woman with contempt and abused her and degraded her.

The jury found Ball, of Broadmead Park, Newport, guilty of ten charges of indecent assaults against the teenager.

He was cleared of two charges of committing a serious sexual offence against her. Ball was found guilty by a majority verdict of raping the woman complainant and also guilty of indecently assaulting her.

He was found not guilty of nine charges of rape, three of causing actual bodily harm and two of committing a serious sexual offence in respect of a second woman.

The judge ordered that upon his release he register for life as a sex offender and directed that the ten years run consecutively to a two-year sentence he is serving for burglary. At the end of the case the teenager, who told the Argus she has tried to take her own life, broke down in tears.

After the hearing, she said: "Now, I know people believed me.... Now he is behind bars." During the case, defence counsel Peter Murphy told the judge: "I don't ask for any reports because the sentence is inevitable. I ask you to pay regard to the totality of the overall sentence. At the time of all the offences he was a severe drug addict."

Ball had denied all the charges during the 12-day trial.

Prosecutor Gregory Bull said Ball had committed a sordid series of sexual assaults. He described him as a dangerous man who preyed on women and "had a split personality rather like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".

He said Ball treated his victims simply as sex objects and sometimes worse than animals. The offences, he said, came to light when evil Ball raped and indecently assaulted a vulnerable young woman.

During the trial, the court heard prosecution claims that Ball used an aerosol to inflict horrific injuries on this woman.

Mr Bull said Ball preyed on his victims and used his domination to abuse them. "He cared nothing for them, only for himself," he said. He added that what Ball did to the woman he raped was "almost torture."

Ball had claimed the allegations were lies and everything that occurred was with consent.