A man viciously attacked his partner after travelling to Inverness to watch a pantomime.
Repeat domestic abuser John Macaulay, from Wick, punched the woman several times and she ran screaming from their hotel room, Inverness Sheriff Court was told.
Macaulay, 34, admitted a single charge of domestic assault.
Fiscal depute Victoria Silver said Macaulay and the woman had been in a relationship for around three months prior to the attack.
She said the pair had travelled to Inverness on December 21 last year for “a couple of days” and had booked a room at The Columba Hotel, on Ness Walk.
“They had attended a pantomime in Inverness and returned to the hotel,” Ms Silver said.
It was then that an argument broke out and Macaulay attacked the woman.
Woman ran screaming from Inverness hotel room
“He has then punched her three of four more times to the back and the leg to her slight injury, causing her to start crying and run out of the locus screaming,” the fiscal depute told Sheriff Sara Matheson.
The court heard that the woman sustained a “lump to her head” and “minor redness to her leg” as a result of the attack.
Defence solicitor Mhyrin Hill said: “It is a nasty incident, there is no way of getting away from it.”
The defence agent said her client, a self-employed digger driver, was “extremely remorseful” about his actions and noted that alcohol consumption had “not assisted this situation”.
Wick man’s second domestic incident
Sheriff Matheson told Macaulay: “This is a second domestic incident involving you and there is an escalation from the first.”
She called for a criminal justice social work report and an assessment for the Caledonian Men’s Programme for domestic offenders to be produced before the sentencing hearing, which will take place next month.
Macaulay, of Breadalbane Terrace, Wick, was bailed to appear then, with a condition that he must not approach or contact his victim.