{"id":299770,"date":"2026-01-23T16:45:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:45:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299770\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T16:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T16:45:08","slug":"court-awaits-delayed-medical-report-in-eleanor-donaldson-trial-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/299770\/","title":{"rendered":"Court awaits delayed medical report in Eleanor Donaldson trial \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A judge has expressed his disappointment at a delayed medical report on Eleanor Donaldson, who is accused of historic sex offences along with her husband, the former <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dup-links\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/dup-links\/\">DUP<\/a> 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>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">At a pretrial review hearing at Newry Crown Court on Friday, judge Paul Ramsey said he had hoped to receive the report following a psychiatric assessment of Ms Donaldson before Christmas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A defence barrister for Ms Donaldson told the court that its completion is \u201cimminent\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">\u201cIt\u2019s only with the report we will be meaningfully able to timetable the next steps,\u201d Ian Turkington said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The trial had originally been scheduled for last March but was put back due to a deterioration in Ms Donaldson\u2019s mental health.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">A fresh trial date was set for November last year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">On Friday, Mr Ramsay said he was a \u201cbit disappointed\u201d at the latest delay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Mr Donaldson (63) 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 \">The couple, who deny all charges, were not in court on Friday as neither defendant was required to attend.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">During the brief hearing, Ms Donaldson\u2019s defence barrister said he had made the prosecution\u2019s legal team aware of the delay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Prosecution barrister Fiona O\u2019Kane agreed to the case being adjourned until next Friday for a further review hearing.<\/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":"A judge has expressed his disappointment at a delayed medical report on Eleanor Donaldson, who is accused of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":57709,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[9,10,4776,13,14,6,41435,11,12,15,16,5,954,7,8,65,66,67],"class_list":{"0":"post-299770","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-dup-links","11":"tag-featured-news","12":"tag-featurednews","13":"tag-headlines","14":"tag-jeffrey-donaldson","15":"tag-latest-news","16":"tag-latestnews","17":"tag-main-news","18":"tag-mainnews","19":"tag-news","20":"tag-northern-ireland","21":"tag-top-stories","22":"tag-topstories","23":"tag-world","24":"tag-world-news","25":"tag-worldnews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115945427648889012","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299770","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=299770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}