Sheriff Brian Mohan at Dumfries told Joy Fletcher, 57, that although the man had suffered quite shocking injuries and had to undergo surgery at the Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, her reaction seemed to have had been in response to extreme behaviour.
Fletcher had admitted repeatedly hitting her partner of six years on the head with the pan at Glenshalloch Road in Dalbeattie last April.
Solicitor Dominic Kearney told the court that Fletcher, who had never been in trouble before, had had a drink and couldn’t remember much of the incident but it followed a period of considerable stress and anxiety over a number of years.
She had even kept a day-to-day diary of the various incidents which had taken place.
In court on Tuesday, Fletcher, who had now moved to stay with her brother in Staffordshire, was made the subject of a community payback order with supervision for 18 months as a direct alternative to a prison sentence.