Doctor warned he could be given indeterminate sentence for string of sex attacks
A doctor was warned he could face an indeterminate jail sentence today (28th Jan) after carrying out a degrading catalogue of rape and abuse against two women that led to one victim branding him "a monster".
A judge told Michael Lever that he would order a full risk assessment should be carried out on him to consider the risk his being at liberty posed to the public at large.
Such an assessment can lead to the imposition of an Order for Lifelong Restriction (OLR). Under such a sentence a court fixes the prison term an offender must serve but any future release is left to the parole authorities.
Lord Uist told Lever: "As I consider that the risk criteria may be met in your case, and I do not know whether they will or not at this stage, I shall make a risk assessment order in respect of you."
Lever's defence counsel, Gary Allan QC, had argued that the judge could deal with him today. He said: "I think there is no doubt here that the sentence will comprise a lengthy custodial period and perhaps a lengthy period of extension."
A background report on him by a social worker had assessed the question of risk from Lever as "generally being high", said Mr Allan.
But he added it was "somewhat ironic" that the social worker, who had not heard the evidence, had introduced the question of an OLR.
Lord Uist said: "If he had heard the evidence it might have been worse."
Lever compelled one woman to take drugs including amyl nitrate, or poppers, and the aphrodisiac Spanish Fly.
One victim told the High Court in Edinburgh that Lever had been "charming" when she first met him..
She said the drug GHB, sometimes known as liquid ecstasy, was put in her drink and she was told to drink it.
Another woman, who met him through a dating website, said he told her that if she did not do what he wanted her to do he would have to kill her.
She said Lever, who at one stage claimed he was the head of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, was "deadly serious" when he made the threat.
The 45-year-old said: "I can see I was groomed like a teenage girl."
Lever, who turns 47 tomorrow, had earlier denied assaulting and raping the women and compelling them to carry out sex acts on a web camera but was unanimously convicted of the offences by a jury.
He was also found guilty of assaulting one victim by punching her on the head.
One woman was assaulted by him at addresses in the Scottish Borders, Glasgow and Edinburgh and another was raped in Ayr.
The court heard that he was a qualified doctor but had not practised since 2004, but was in the process of taking up a post at a hospital in Ayr when he was detained in 2013.
Lever was previously held at the high-security psychiatric State Hospital at Carstairs but was transferred back to the prison system.
He was earlier placed on the sex offenders' register.