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Wife-beating MSP Bill Walker gets off with just one year

Women's rights campaigners demand change to domestic violence laws

Women's rights campaigners have demanded that serial domestic abusers be tried in higher courts after disgraced former MSP Bill Walker was jailed for just 12 months for decades of violence.

Mr Walker was give the stiffest jail term available to Edinburgh sheriff Kathrine Mackie after his conviction in summary court last month for a string of attacks against his three former wives and a stepdaughter between 1967 and 1995.

Scottish Women's Aid manager Lily Greenan said summary court trials were appropriate for a single act of common assault, but repeatedly assaulting a partner or several partners was "a different kind of crime with a significantly greater impact.

"It should be prosecuted in a higher level court with a greater range of sentencing powers," she said.

She said Women's Aid would ask the Scottish government and Crown Office why domestic abuse was tried in courts that could only offer such a paltry reprimand.

Mr Walker was SNP MSP for Dunfermline from 2011 until he resigned last month more than two weeks after his convictions. He cited a "media onslaught" as the reason.

Sherriff Mackie said he had shown contempt for his former wives and step daughter.

He was found guilty of assaulting his first wife Maureen Traquair on three occasions in the 1960s and 1980s, assaulting his second wife Anne Gruber 15 times between 1978 and 1984, assaulting and injuring Ms Gruber's 16-year-old daughter, Anne Louise Paterson, by repeatedly striking her on the head with a saucepan in 1978 and four assaults on his third wife Diana Walker between June 1988 and January 1995.

First Minister Alex Salmond said: "The custodial sentence handed down to Bill Walker reflects the extremely serious nature of his crimes, for which he has shown no contrition."

Mr Walker's solicitor Russel McPhate said: "He is still maintaining his innocence and an appeal has been marked."

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