Violent rapist who harassed female journalists further jailed for breaching release conditions

Mark McAnaw, aged 53 and formerly resident in Letterkenny, County Donegal, has received an additional ten-month custodial sentence at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for breaching conditions attached to a suspended sentence. Judge Martin Nolan activated ten months of a sixteen-month suspended element imposed in 2023, to be served consecutively to an eleven-year sentence handed down in June 2025. McAnaw had pleaded guilty in June to harassing three female journalists employed by the Sunday World during August 2023. The harassment comprised explicit and threatening emails, including threats to kill, and unwanted attendance at their workplace. Judge Pauline Codd, who imposed the original eleven-year term, declined McAnaw's request to suspend the final twelve months of that sentence, citing his extensive history of violent and sexual offending and his failure to engage with mental health intervention whilst detained at the Central Mental Hospital. The earlier suspended sentence, imposed in June 2023, related to an aggravated burglary committed in April 2018, when McAnaw forced entry to a Dublin residence armed with a large kitchen knife, three months after completing a nine-year sentence for sexual assault. The court has imposed a lifelong contact prohibition order and an exclusion order requiring McAnaw to remain ten miles from the homes and workplaces of the three complainants. He remains detained in the Central Mental Hospital, where he is assessed as presenting a high risk of violent and sexual reoffending. McAnaw's criminal convictions span several decades, including a 1989 kidnapping conviction and a 2012 rape conviction arising from offences in County Donegal.