Creep sent threats to women and turned up at their workplace

Victims tell of feeling 'sick' and left living in fear

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The court heard he repeatedly sent them emails and messages of a violent and sexually threatening nature, which escalated to him threatening to put a “bullet” in one of them.

He also referred to himself as an “IRA Top Boy”.

He turned up at the Sunday World offices on Talbot Street and, when refused entry, went to a cafe across the road.

When gardai approached him there, McAnaw was in the process of writing an email to Ms Tallant.

McAnaw is currently detained in the Central Mental Hospital. He does not accept his diagnosis of schizophrenia and has declined to take medication, the court was told.

His previous convictions include the rape of a foreign student in Donegal in October 2010, for which he was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2012.

McAnaw also has a 1989 conviction for kidnapping and convictions for assaults causing actual bodily harm from a court in the North in 2011.

He also has a conviction for aggravated assault after attacking a woman in her home in April 2018, for which he received a sentence of eight years and four months in June 2023.

This sentence was backdated to 2018 when he went into custody, with the final 16 months suspended for 16 years on strict conditions.