Alzheimer's doctor's career in the balance after abuse trial

Dr Fraser Inglis, 53, trapped his then wife Elizabeth’s arm in a heavy wooden door and hit it again and again with the door, before pushing her to floor and repeatedly striking the side of her head with his foot.

Ms Inglis, 45, a nurse and at the time a self-confessed alcoholic, said she was left looking “like a battered wife” after the attack, which occurred in February 2010 at the couple’s £725,000 former home in Dunbane, Perthshire.

Inglis, founder of the Glasgow Memory Clinic, was found guilty in July after a trial held over eight days that took nearly a year to complete.

When he appeared for sentence yesterday the medic was told by Sheriff William Wood that it had been a “sustained” assault.

Sentencing him to 100 hours community service, he said: “This is the sort of offence which in another context might well justify a custodial sentence.”

He said he had considered and rejected representations by Inglis’s lawyer that he should be given an absolute discharge.

Sheriff Wood said: “Clearly you are a person for whom any sentence other than an absolute discharge will mean you may well suffer significant consequences professionally.

“The question arises whether it would be expedient or just to inflict further punishment.

“It does seem to me sufficiently serious that there must be some punitive element.”

Stirling Sheriff Court heard Inglis “flipped” when Mrs Inglis questioned why their teenage daughter, who she thought should have been doing homework, was watching TV.

The youngster, now a 21-year-old student, said it was “like my dad had pent-up anger and he just wanted to take it out of her”. She described her parents’ relationship as “like an illness”.

Inglis, now of Kilmahog, Perthshire, had denied the assault.