Jail for abusive partner who attacked three women
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WOMEN needed protecting from a man who attacked three partners over a 14-year period, a sheriff ruled yesterday.
Sinclair Ross was jailed for 26 months at Inverness Sheriff Court after admitting punching, kicking and pulling the hair of the women and striking one of them with a metal clothes horse.
Fifty-seven-year-old Ross, whose address was given as the Highlander Hostel in Inverness, carried out the attacks at various addresses in Inverness and Ross-shire, beginning in 1999.
Solicitor Shahid Latif said his client was a product of the environment he was brought up in, having witnessed domestic violence.
"Nothing can justify the type of behaviour to which he has pled guilty, but that does not mean a plea in mitigation cannot be advanced," Mr Latif told the court, adding that the offences occurred when Ross was struggling with alcohol abuse.
A social work report did not categorise Ross as a significant danger to the community and suggested an alternative to imprisonment.
But Sheriff David Sutherland said only a jail sentence was appropriate.
"These charges involved you in assaults on ladies with whom you had been in relationships with over a considerable period," he told Ross. "Ladies must be protected from behaviour like this."
