Journalists speak of living in fear after harassment and threats from violent rapist

A man with extensive convictions for rape and violent crime has been sentenced to eleven years imprisonment for harassing three female journalists employed by the Sunday World. Mark McAnaw, aged 52 and formerly resident in Letterkenny, County Donegal, pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to charges arising from a sustained campaign of harassment in August 2023. The court heard that McAnaw sent explicit and threatening emails to the three women, made threats to kill, and attended their workplace. The harassment caused significant distress to the recipients, with one woman reporting that she lived in constant fear and another stating she felt physically ill upon discovering McAnaw's criminal history. Judge Pauline Codd imposed the full sentence after McAnaw declined to accept conditions that would have resulted in the suspension of the final twelve months. The judge imposed a lifelong contact ban and ordered McAnaw to remain ten miles from the women's homes and workplaces. She noted his history of violent offending and his failure to engage with mental health treatment while detained at the Central Mental Hospital, where he remains in custody. The court assessed him as presenting a high risk of violent and sexual reoffending. McAnaw's criminal history spans decades and includes a nine-year sentence imposed in 2012 for sexually assaulting a student in County Donegal, and a 1989 conviction for kidnapping. In 2023, he received an eight-year-four-month sentence for an aggravated burglary committed in 2018, just three months after his release from the earlier nine-year sentence. The suspended portion of that sentence was subsequently activated following his guilty pleas in the harassment matter.