A doctor who indecently assaulted a teenage girl was jailed for three years.

Darren Holdsworth, 36, of Keighley, had admitted that he attacked the girl, who later tried to commit suicide, at his flat in Glasgow on November 8 and 9 last year.

Sentencing Holdsworth, pictured, at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, Lord McEwan gave him a five-year term, telling him that he would serve three years in custody and remain under supervision for a further two years after his release.

Holdsworth buried his head in his hands and shouted in disbelief. His new partner, in the public gallery, also cried out.

Maurice Smyth, solicitor-advocate for the accused, had invited the judge to consider a fine or non-custodial sentence.

But Lord McEwan said Holdsworth was so in debt he would be unable to pay a fine and that the seriousness of the charge had forced him to pass a custodial sentence.

Holdsworth, a psychiatrist who had worked with patients in a drugs and drink rehabilitation clinic in Glasgow's Stobhill Hospital, was initially charged with raping the girl.

But on October 15 at the High Court in Glasgow the Crown dropped the rape allegation and deleted charges that he had restrained her on a bed and taken indecent photographs of her.

Holdsworth, of Syke Side, Birchwood Road, Utley, had pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of indecently assaulting the girl, striking her with a coat hanger and rubbing oil on her body.

A plea of not guilty to half-strangling the girl with his hands at his parents' home in Keighley on November 8 last year was also accepted. And a charge that he sexually assaulted another woman between October and December 2001 at his flat in Glasgow was also dropped by the Crown.

Lord McEwan also admonished Holdsworth for being found in possession of cannabis at his Glasgow flat on January 17 this year.

Holdsworth, who has a previous conviction for assault in Bradford in 1994, met the 19-year-old in a Glasgow restaurant in October 2001, the court was told. He slipped the girl a note asking her to ring him.

They began a relationship lasting around a fortnight during which time the girl moved in with Holdsworth after an acrimonious argument with her mother.

Holdsworth, who was sharing his flat with another person, later told the girl she would have to move out and she then became homeless. The teenager tried to take her own life with a cocktail of vodka and pills.

Mr Smyth said the couple were having a consensual sexual relationship until the assault took place. His client's career was in ruins - he had been suspended from practising medicine and faced a GMC hearing.

But the judge said that a social inquiry report, which said that Holdsworth had been addicted to cannabis at 16 and drank alcohol to excess, were "bleak in the extreme".

He described Holdsworth as a "potential risk to women".