Convicted rapist gets booze ban after being charged with breaching sex offenders register

Lisburn Magistrates Court heard that Brandon Rainey’s father alerted police when “he failed to reside at home for two days with no contact” so police located and arrested him.

Appearing at court by video link from police custody 27-year-old Rainey, from Corceeny Place in Lurgan, was charged with breaching the requirements of the sex offenders register on 24 February by failing to notifying police or his Designated Risk Manager of any new address.

The court heard that in an argument over alcohol, his father had withdrawn his address but defence solicitor Stewart Ballentine said that since the arrest, “there’s been a change of heart and the father, who acted very responsibly, is will to have him back.”

Granting bail in the sum of £250, District Judge Anne Marshall also barred Rainey from alcohol and wanted him to “be in no doubt that if you breach again there’s a very real risk you will be in Maghaberry until you are dealt with.”

Previously, Rainey sparked a province wide hunt when he fled a secure mental health clinic around this time last year.

Held at the Shannon clinic in south Belfast, category three sex offenders Rainey went out for a smoke on 12 February last year but staff at the Covid testing centre at the entrance to Knockbracken “saw him getting into a silver taxi” which drove off.

The disappearance of the high risk sex sparked a province wide search involving a “large scale police operation with many officers, patrol cars and the police helicopter,” a prosecutor told a court last year, adding that Rainey managed to evade arrest “with the assistance of family members” for four days.

When he was attested he told cops he was aware of the terms of his Sexual Offences Prevention Order but he had wanted to visit his brother in Ballymena and the court heard the 10 year SOPO was initially imposed in 2015 at Downpatrick Crown Court.

In that case, Rainey was jailed for rape and sexual assault after the mother of a 12-year-old girl caught him in bed with her daughter but within hours of being freed in 2016, Rainey was re-arrested and detained after a probation officer told a court the rapist planned to “get off his head and have sex on the day of his release.”

In court yesterday, DJ Marshall adjourned the case to 14 March.