A man’s plans for a new life in Australia with his family have gone under after he assaulted a 15-year-old boy with a wine bottle.

The victim needed hospital treatment for cuts to his head after Christopher McMillan hit him in a revenge attack.

McMillan’s barrister, Ben Crosland, yesterday urged a judge at Bradford Crown Court to take an exceptional course of action and not pass a custodial or community sentence.

Mr Crosland said: “This is a defining moment for the family, whose plan is to emigrate to Australia. Any custodial sentence, immediate or suspended, is a bar to the visa this family has obtained. They have worked for four years to secure the State sponsorship they now have.”

Mr Crosland said McMillan was a builder and bricklayer, and although he did not have guaranteed work, he had been going to Perth, in Western Australia, where there was a State scheme to build 55,000 homes.

Mr Crosland said McMillan and his hairdresser wife had two young children. One was of school age and had said his goodbyes to his classmates. The family’s possessions and furniture were already in Australia.

But Recorder Paul Miller said a custodial sentence was unavoidable. He told McMillan: “It’s clear you have something to offer. It’s a great pity your behaviour means you cannot contribute to Australia.”

McMillan, 30, of Greenhead Drive, Utley, Keighley, had pleaded guilty to causing actual bodily harm and damaging property.

Prosecutor Duncan Ritchie told the court McMillan had been injured in a scuffle with the 15-year-old. He was angry and went back to the teenager’s house the next morning, taking a shovel handle from the back of his van.

The boy’s mother was woken by the sound of glass smashing and found the front door window broken. She found McMillan holding the broken shovel handle and a bottle of wine.

McMillan went in the house and hit the teenager with the bottle, causing it to smash.

Mr Crosland said he felt enormous shame and guilt. He said it had been a moment of madness.

Recorder Miller told McMillan he accepted there would be profound effects on him and his family. But he added: “The calculation that went into this assault and use of weapons on someone half your age in his own home makes a custodial sentence unavoidable.”

He sentenced him to 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years, with supervision and 150 hours of unpaid community work, and ordered him to pay £750 compensation and £250 towards prosecution costs.