A pensioner has been spared jail after sexually assaulting a woman he had been drinking with.
Instead, Sheriff Margaret Neilson imposed a community payback order on 67-year-old John Wylie of Lochalsh Road, Inverness.
He had previously admitted sexually assaulting the woman at another city address on July 3 2018.
Wylie received the maximum 300 hours of unpaid work, was placed under social work supervision and put on the sex offenders register for three years.
At a hearing in March, Inverness Sheriff Court heard that Wylie had returned to the property from work and consumed alcohol with the woman before he made sexual advances towards her.
Fiscal depute Robert Weir said they were rejected and he was asked to leave the house.
Wylie then took hold of her shoulders and pinned her to the floor on her back, before sexually assaulting her.
She tried to scream, he said, but was unable to do so due to the fact that Wylie had placed his arm on her neck.
The woman bit him on the arm and he eventually released his hold on her and went to bed.
A fingernail scraping from Wylie was found to contain the woman’s DNA and she later provided a full statement to the police.
Defence solicitor advocate Mike Chapman told the court that his client had a long-standing alcohol problem, brought on by a family tragedy years ago.