{"id":988646,"date":"2026-05-27T19:49:32","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/988646\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T19:49:32","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:49:32","slug":"northern-ireland-unionist-ex-leader-faces-rape-and-sexual-abuse-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/988646\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern Ireland unionist ex-leader faces rape and sexual abuse trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 The former leader of Northern Ireland\u2019s largest unionist party repeatedly sexually abused two girls in crimes dating back four decades, a prosecutor told jurors Wednesday in opening statements at his rape trial.<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Donaldson, 63, former leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, pleaded not guilty to one count of rape, four counts of gross indecency and 13 indecent assault charges involving two alleged victims between 1985 and 2008.<\/p>\n

Prosecutor Rosemary Walsh told jurors in Newry Crown Court that the alleged victims complained to police more than two years ago about \u201cdifficult and traumatic incidents they say happened when they were children.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donaldson resigned as leader of the DUP<\/a> and quit as a lawmaker in the U.K. Parliament, after he was arrested in March 2024.<\/p>\n

Donaldson\u2019s resignation shocked the DUP shortly after the party ended its boycott of Northern Ireland\u2019s semiautonomous government and returned to a power-sharing agreement, after he won concessions on Britain\u2019s post-Brexit trading arrangements<\/a> with the European Union.<\/p>\n

As leader of the DUP between 2021 and 2023, he was the most powerful figure in Northern Ireland\u2019s unionist movement, which seeks to maintain the region\u2019s historic ties to the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n

The two alleged victims told police that Donaldson groped them when they were around primary school age, and the older of the two, referred to in court as Complainant B, said that the abuse continued for several years, Walsh said. <\/p>\n

Years later, Complainant B said that a meeting was arranged through a church and Donaldson apologized \u201cfor what had happened in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Donaldson was interviewed by police, he said that it was \u201cunbelievable\u201d that he would have touched her sexually. <\/p>\n

His wife, Eleanor Donaldson, has denied charges of aiding and abetting her husband\u2019s alleged offenses, but she\u2019s not in court because Judge Paul Ramsey ruled her unfit to stand trial for mental health reasons.<\/p>\n

Jurors will decide her case on facts, but she can\u2019t be convicted of a crime or punished. The trial is expected to last up to a month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 The former leader of Northern Ireland\u2019s largest unionist party repeatedly sexually abused two girls in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":988647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5011],"tags":[30,188,48666,4179,7147,8615,274725,116625,1144,274726,274724,34745,63907,16,15,263],"class_list":["post-988646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-northern-ireland","tag-courts","tag-crime","tag-eleanor-donaldson","tag-general-news","tag-indictments","tag-international-news","tag-jeffrey-eleanor-donaldson","tag-juries","tag-northern-ireland","tag-paul-ramsey","tag-rosemary-walsh","tag-sexual-assault","tag-trials","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116648278173127188","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=988646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/988646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/988647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=988646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=988646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=988646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}