![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/court-768x644-1.png\")
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A former Sinn F\u00e9in press officer and journalist who was jailed in November last for sexual communication with a child charges could have his licence revoked after he appeared at Limavady Magistrate\u2019s Court charged with breaching his Sexual Offences Prevention Order.<\/p>\n
Michael McMonagle (44), whose address was formerly given as Limewood Street in Derry, was charged with breaching his SOPO by being in a chat room without permission from his designated risk manager on October 21.<\/p>\n
A police officer told the court that McGonagle is a Category 2 registered sex offender who is prohibited from accessing chat rooms without permission from his designated risk manager.<\/p>\n
She told the court that on October 21st, McMonagle was asked to provide his device for examination, and it was discovered that he had been on a site with a chat room element and had contacted a number of females.<\/p>\n
The court heard that McMonagle admitted he had not informed his designated risk manager about this, and he was subsequently arrested.<\/p>\n
Defence solicitor Paddy McGurk told the court that since his release, the defendant had \u2018kept himself to himself\u2019.<\/p>\n
He said the offences and his conviction have had \u2018a significant effect on his life\u2019 and it was a major fall from grace as McMonagle had a previous career in journalism and public relations.<\/p>\n
The solicitor stated that McMonagle had complied with all other conditions, but probation had initiated the paperwork regarding the revocation of his licence.<\/p>\n
District Judge Peter King said that the question of revoking the licence was best left to the Crown Court.<\/p>\n
He said that in this case, it was \u2018clearly within the licence period\u2019 and the defendant could expect further developments regarding his licence.<\/p>\n
He said in the case in front of him, he had pleaded guilty, and there was no suggestion of anything \u2018untoward\u2019 in the chat room or anything sexual.<\/p>\n
He sentenced McMonagle to one month in prison, suspended for a period of 12 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A former Sinn F\u00e9in press officer and journalist who was jailed in November last for sexual communication with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-138489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-featured-news","11":"tag-featurednews","12":"tag-headlines","13":"tag-latest-news","14":"tag-latestnews","15":"tag-main-news","16":"tag-mainnews","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-top-stories","19":"tag-topstories","20":"tag-world","21":"tag-world-news","22":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}