Sex offender gets house arrest for breaches
Mark Douglas Harnish, 25, of Nasonworth, sentenced for failing to keep authorities apprised of his address last year and for missing required court appearance in May
A Nasonworth man who didn’t keep the sex-offender registry up to date on where he was living and skipped court in the spring avoided a jail term this week.
Mark Douglas Harnish, 25, of Route 101, appeared in Fredericton provincial court Monday for sentencing, having previously admitted to two criminal offences.
Harnish pleaded guilty this fall to breaching a court order under the Sex Offender Information Registration Act (SOIRA) on Feb. 28, 2022, by failing to report in person to the registration centre to advise of where he was living, and to failing to attend court May 24 on that charge.
Breaches of court orders can often lead to short stints in provincial jail, but provincial court Judge Cameron Gunn instead imposed conditional-sentence orders totalling four months, to be served in the community.
For the first two months of the conditional sentence, the offender will be under house arrest save for limited exceptions, and then he’ll be subject to a nightly curfew for the remaining two months.
Following that, he’ll be on probation for 12 months.
Harnish is subject to the SOIRA order as a result of a 2019 conviction for sexually assaulting a woman two years prior.
Don MacPherson can be contacted at ftonindependent@gmail.com.