A man who previously received a four-month prison sentence for offences under the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related Offences Act against his former partner – now a Sinn F\u00e9in MEP – has had his sentence increased on appeal.<\/p>\n
Se\u00e1n Tyrrell of Cypress Grove, Loughboy, Kilkenny, was previously given a four-month custodial sentence, with a separate four-month jail term suspended for two years, for offences under the legislation, which is also known as Coco’s Law.<\/p>\n
The 39-year-old previously pleaded guilty to the offences which relate to August 2022, when Kathleen Funchion was a TD for the Carlow-Kilkenny constituency.<\/p>\n
Last April, before Kilkenny District Court, he was given a four-month custodial sentence, with a separate four-month jail term suspended for two years. However, he took a severity-only appeal before Kilkenny Circuit Court.<\/p>\n
Judge Cormac Quinn today increased the previous custodial sentence handed down to Tyrrell to one of five months.<\/p>\n
The judge also increased the suspended sentence Tyrrell previously received from four months to five months.<\/p>\n
This second sentence was again suspended in full for a period of two years from today on condition that the accused be of good behaviour and not communicate with or about Ms Funchion.<\/p>\n
Judge Quinn said Tyrrell had threatened to expose embarrassing allegations by electronic means about Ms Funchion.<\/p>\n
The judge said all of these allegations were unfounded and untrue and the offending had caused Ms Funchion enormous distress in both her personal and professional life.<\/p>\n
Judge Quinn said, as a result, a custodial sentence was warranted and inevitable.<\/p>\n
‘Justice has been done’<\/p>\n
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Ms Funchion said she feels “justice has been done” following the decision.<\/p>\n
She said she had experienced a “huge sense of relief” after Tyrell was sentenced last April but then found the appeal “devastating”.<\/p>\n
“I felt a bit, I suppose, hopeless in all of it as well, and just a bit devastated,” she told reporters.<\/p>\n
“So getting the sentence today in terms of it’s actually been increased, I just feel so much that justice has been done.<\/p>\n
“I really hope it sends out a very strong message – first of all to other women in that situation, please do come forward, please talk. I know how hard it is. There are many days you doubt yourself and many days we think, what have I done here, this is never going to end.<\/p>\n
“But we’ll never get the justice like you get when a judge is saying to you that this person is getting a custodial sentence. They’re going to jail, it’s what they deserve.”<\/p>\n
Ms Funchion said she feels as though she can “finally” move on after living her life in a “kind of strange limbo”.<\/p>\n
She said she hopes that today will provide closure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A man who previously received a four-month prison sentence for offences under the Harassment, Harmful Communications and Related…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-300961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}