news.scotsman.com
By JOHN ROBERTSON law correspondent

A POT-SMOKING psychiatrist with adventurous sexual tastes was yesterday branded a potential risk to women and jailed for three years for an indecent assault on a teenager.

Darren Holdsworth, 36, appeared stunned and close to tears after a judge rejected a plea to spare him from a prison term. A court heard that the assault had been committed during a two-week relationship of \”exploratory and uninhibited\” sex between Holdsworth and the victim, aged 19.

Holdsworth, who practised at Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow, saw his thrashing of the woman with a metal coathanger as being part of the \”sexual repertoire\” and had believed she would be willing to take part in an act of unorthodox intercourse, it was claimed.

However, Lord McEwan told Holdsworth that the woman had been \”very vulnerable\” and should have been recognised as such by a medical man. The judge added: \”Background reports indicate to me that you are a potential risk to women.\”

The reports also stated that Holdsworth, from Keighley, West Yorkshire, had used cannabis since he was 16 and continued to use it, as well as drinking to excess.

Lord McEwan questioned whether that was \”not a rather concerning matter in a professional man.\” He was told that Holdsworth, currently suspended, faced being taken before the General Medical Council.

Holdsworth was originally accused of raping the woman on 8 and 9 November last year at his then home in Novar Drive, Hyndland, Glasgow, but his guilty plea to a reduced charge of indecent assault, by striking her with a coathanger and having anal sex, was accepted by the Crown.

Although he had a conviction in England from 1994 for assault occasioning actual bodily harm, Holdsworth later qualified as a psychiatrist and worked in drugs and drink a rehabilitation clinic at Stobhill Hospital.

He met the woman in a restaurant and Maurice Smyth, solicitor-advocate for Holdsworth, said that over a period of a fortnight the couple had \”extensive, intensive, exploratory and uninhibited consensual sex\”.

After rows with her mother about the relationship, the woman moved in with Holdsworth. Mr Smyth said the accused had thought the sex acts would be accepted, but when the woman objected he immediately stopped. \”The use of the coathanger was part of the sexual repertoire,\” he added. The couple had gone to sleep and had sex the next morning before going to work, parting on good terms.

Later that day, the woman took an overdose, but Mr Smyth insisted it had not been due to the offence.

Lord McEwan ordered that Holdsworth be supervised for a further two years after his jail sentence.