A RENOWNED Scottish memory doctor is facing jail after he was found guilty of attacking and injuring his ex-wife at the home they shared.
Dr Fraser Inglis, 53, who carries out pioneering studies into Alzheimer’s disease, assaulted Elizabeth Inglis, also known as Elizabeth Rowbottom, by repeatedly trapping her arm in a door.
He then pushed her to the floor and repeatedly struck her on the head with his foot, all to her injury.
During a marathon trial at Stirling Sheriff Court, lasting more than a year, it was revealed the incident happened in February 2010, at the home they shared in Glen Road, Dunblane, Perthshire.
Dr Inglis – the founder of the Glasgow Memory Clinic – was with his daughter Marianne in a lounge when his ex-wife, Marianne’s mother, Elizabeth, attempted to enter the room.
Elizabeth, 45, had told the trial how she was left bruised after she had questioned why their teenage daughter, who should have been doing homework for her prelims, was instead watching TV.
The mother of three, a nurse, who described herself as “what you’d call a high-functioning alcoholic,” said she had since gone through Alcoholics Anonymous’ 12-step programme and had dealt with her drink problem.
She said of the attack: “I knew that with force like that I could end up with cerebral damage. The bruising went all yellow and green, even with makeup on.
“I felt so embarrassed – I looked like a battered wife.”
Marianne, 21, told how she was watching TV with her father when her mother tried to get into the lounge “looking for a fight”.
She recalled how Dr Inglis had closed the “heavy, sharp-edged wooden double door” on her mother’s arm several times.
In a statement she gave police she said: “My dad shut the door violently on my mum’s arm to stop her coming in the room.
“He started thumping the door on my mum’s arm in a blind rage.”
She said she got scared and went into another room and curled up, but heard her mother screaming so went back to discover her “lying on the floor”.
She added: “My mum was crying and my dad just stormed past me and went upstairs to his bed.”
Dr Inglis, of Leny Feus, near Kilmahog, Perthshire, said he was proud of his daughter and described her as “honest” but said she had interpreted the events incorrectly.
He described his ex-wife as “puerile” and a “liar” who had “destroyed” their beautiful home and was “damaged by alcoholism”. He said he had closed the door between them to prevent her from attacking their daughter, and claimed the accusation of domestic abuse was “completely false and actually quite the opposite,” adding that “the only people who were on the end of domestic abuse were myself and Marianne.”
But Sheriff William Wood, sitting alone and without a jury, found Dr Inglis guilty of the single charge of assault.
He said although he accepted Elizabeth Inglis had “a capacity for deception,” he had found Marianne “quite a remarkable woman”.
Sheriff Wood described Dr Inglis’ own evidence as “somewhat unremarkable,” adding “I prefer Marianne’s account over that of Dr Inglis”.
Sentence was deferred until next month.
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