{"id":113588,"date":"2025-10-10T15:07:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/113588\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T15:07:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T15:07:08","slug":"judge-to-decide-later-this-month-if-trial-can-go-ahead-in-november-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/113588\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge to decide later this month if trial can go ahead in November \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The judge in the trial of the former DUP leader <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/jeffrey-donaldson\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/jeffrey-donaldson\/\">Jeffrey Donaldson<\/a> will decide later this month whether proceedings can go ahead as scheduled in November.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">The trial of Mr Donaldson and his wife Eleanor, who are accused of sexual offences, is due to begin on November 3rd. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">During a brief hearing at Newry Crown Court on Friday, the court was told a further report regarding the health of Mrs Donaldson had just been received, and additional medical appointments were scheduled for next week. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall b-it-article-body__text--left\">Adjourning the case until October 20th, Judge Paul Ramsey said he would be in a \u201cbetter position\u201d to judge whether the trial could go ahead as scheduled on that date. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Donaldson (62) with an address in Dromore, Co Down, previously pleaded not guilty to 18 offences \u2013 one count of rape, four of gross indecency with or towards a child, and 13 of indecent assault on a female, on dates between 1987 and 2008.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Ms Donaldson (59), of the same address, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of aiding and abetting in connection with the charges faced by her husband.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Neither of the defendants was required to be in court on Friday. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Their trial was originally due to take place earlier this year but was postponed due to a deterioration in Mrs Donaldson\u2019s mental health. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Donaldson, the long-standing MP for Lagan Valley, resigned as DUP leader and was suspended from the party after he was arrested and charged in March 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Weeks before his arrest, he had led the DUP back into Stormont after a two-year boycott of the northern powersharing institutions.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The then-deputy leader, Gavin Robinson, was appointed his successor as DUP leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The judge in the trial of the former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson will decide later this month whether&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,13,14,6,41435,11,12,15,16,5,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-113588","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-jeffrey-donaldson","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-latestnews","16":"tag-main-news","17":"tag-mainnews","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-topstories","21":"tag-world","22":"tag-world-news","23":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113588","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=113588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}