From the honours list to the sex offenders list

In June 2026, people across Northern Ireland observed in stunned horror as it became a proven fact that Jeffrey Donaldson, the former leader of the DUP, was in fact a child rapist and sex offender who had been carrying out vile acts from 1985, the same year he entered electoral politics. Joshua Murray writes about the trial and its implications.

“Take Mr Donaldson down,” Judge Paul Ramsay said at the end of proceedings on 22 June 2026, following an acrimonious month-long trial in Newry Crown Court. This was immediately after a jury unanimously found that Jeffrey Donaldson committed 18 acts of sexual abuse against two women when they were children between 1985 and 2008. This included one count of rape.

The former DUP leader was subsequently dispatched to Maghaberry Prison, where he is remanded in custody before he is sentenced at the end of September 2026. Judge Ramsey has told Donaldson to expect a lengthy prison sentence.

His wife, Eleanor Donaldson, was proven on five counts to have aided and abetted her husband’s crimes. However, as she faced a trial of the facts due to poor mental health, it has merely been proven that she did what she was accused of, but she will face no criminal convictions and will not serve any time in prison.

Donaldson was first arrested and charged with the historical offences in March 2024. At the time, he was in the immediate aftermath of a victory lap in the United States after the restoring of power sharing in Stormont, with Donaldson’s Windsor Framework being successfully sold to the DUP faithful.

While Donaldson sat in Washington DC in March 2024, lapping up the praise from his unwitting flatterers including then-US President Joe Biden, only one other attendee in the room, the PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher, was aware of what was to come. This is because two women, known as Victim A and Victim B in order to protect their right to anonymity, had made a formal complaint to the PSNI at the time and the then-DUP leader was under investigation for the offences he has now been found guilty of committing.
Before the end of that month, the PSNI had arrested Donaldson and his wife for historical sexual offences, and a giant of Northern Ireland politics was defenestrated from political leadership in the most staggering of circumstances.

Crisis in the DUP

For the last two years, the shadow of Donaldson has loomed over the DUP. This was an awkward situation for both the leader Gavin Robinson and the deputy First Minister, Emma Little-Pengelly.

As this was a live case due to many delays in run-up to the trial for two years, the scope for public comment has been limited. However, there have been some flickers.

Firstly, Robinson gave an interview to Sky News in the immediate aftermath of Donaldson’s resignation and charging, referring to it as a “devastating revelation” which had caused “tremendous shock”.

Just hours earlier, Robinson had been ratified as interim leader of the DUP by its party officers, while Donaldson was expelled from the party.

This swift response promoted praise by many across the local media. However, among the public, the response was not so enthusiastic. In the 2024 general election, the DUP received a bloody nose from the electorate. The DUP lost nearly half of its seats in the House of Commons to three different parties.

In addition to the losses of seats in Lagan Valley, Donaldson’s former seat, North Antrim (home of the Paisley dynasty for over 50 years), and South Antrim to the Ulster Unionists, party stalwarts Gregory Campbell and Sammy Wilson recorded less-than-comfortable victories in their respective East Londonderry and East Antrim seats, both of which are traditional unionist strongholds.

While again the scope for debate was limited due to the live nature of the Donaldson case at the time, party figures have admitted that the arrest of their former leader was raised constantly on the doorsteps during the campaign.

In the subsequent DUP conference in October 2024, it was clear that the spectre of the previous leader clearly continued to haunt the DUP. In reference to the circumstances in which he became leader and the general election, Robinson said: “If the message of Easter reminds us of anything, it is that the darkness of Good Friday has passed; we do not live in the shadows of yesterday but walk in the light of today and for the hope of tomorrow.”
The choice in wording was especially relevant as Donaldson was arrested and charged on Good Friday 2024.

Following Robinson’s speech, in what was expected to be a general message of appreciation for the new leader, party chairman Maurice Morrow, after ambiguously referencing the “extenuating circumstances” which plagued the DUP’s poor general election campaign, led the tributes, affirming his and the party’s support for the leadership.

Referring to the immediate aftermath of Donaldson’s resignation, Morrow said: “I do remember that fateful Saturday morning when we met as party officers… Our deputy leader then, Gavin, was asked a straight question: will you take over the mantle? I was the one that asked him. He said: ‘If this party asks me to do it, I will do it’.”

One year later, with Donaldson’s shadow still looming large and a date for a court case still not set, agendaNi interviewed deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly. In a wide-ranging interview, there was an air of awkwardness. This is because the deputy First Minister holds her position due to being hand picked by Donaldson for the role.
Indeed, the Lagan Valley seat she represents in the Assembly is one for which she has no electoral mandate, and this seat was also won by Donaldson in the 2024 Assembly election.

While Pengelly did not make any specific comment when asked if the DUP has been “traumatised” by the events with Donaldson, she said: “There’s no doubt about in the circumstances that that’s been very challenging.” She added that she was “very conscious that there’s legal proceedings underway, so I can say very little about at this time”.

While Pengelly cannot have known the true nature of her one-time political mentor, her close association with him may prove to be a challenge for the DUP when it is campaigning for local and Assembly elections in the spring of 2027.

The affair continued to linger awkwardly in the background and plagued the DUP’s standing among the public. Anyone who follows politics closely will have known that Gavin Robinson would need to prepare the most significant speech of his career for whatever the jury in Newry would find.
When Robinson’s predecessor was found guilty on all charges, the current DUP leader delivered, saying: “It is now clear, beyond doubt, that he [Donaldson] abused various positions of power over many years from 1985 onwards and covered up his vile and manipulative behaviour.

“We have been shocked at the evidence presented. What we have heard reported from court has been filthy and vile. For our part, we strongly believe in placing our faith in the rule of law.”

He later added: “No one, regardless of status or position, can ever be above the law and Jeffrey Donaldson is no exception. Abuse, preying on the innocent, and taking advantage of the vulnerability of children in particular is evil.

“That Jeffrey Donaldson’s lies and cover-ups have been uncovered and the spotlight of justice shone upon them should serve as a reminder that perpetrators cannot outrun justice. Victims can and must triumph over the evil and darkness that pervaded their innocent lives. Our thoughts continue to be with them.”
While Robinson delivered a speech worthy of the moment, subsequent reporting has shed a less pleasant light on the DUP and exposed highly hypocritical behaviour by Donaldson (unrelated to his criminal convictions) which it appears was tolerated due to his political capabilities.

Through reporting by BBC Spotlight, the Belfast Telegraph, and The Irish News, it has emerged that senior PSNI officers, British state security forces, Ian Paisley Junior, Jim Wells, and Edwin Poots were aware of different respective parts of Donaldson’s behaviour. Poots and Paisley have claimed to have raised his behaviour with senior party leadership at the time.

What is clear is that Donaldson has, over decades, been a hypocrite who was hiding behind his Christianity all while allegedly sexually harassing a female MLA when in America in 2009, and going to ‘gay saunas’ in London at the same time as condemning homosexuality as “sinful” in 2006. Paisley also claims that Donaldson projectile vomited over the mayor of Beijing in the mid-2000s due to excessive alcohol consumption.

Despite this, the DUP still saw fit to make Donaldson its leader, and even embarrassed itself by removing Poots from the position after only three weeks to make way for the now convicted paedophile.

The subsequent reports do not make comfortable reading for the wider media either, as many examples of Donaldson’s hypocrisy were well-known. However, many in the public remained ignorant as the mainstream media refused to report on his hypocritical nature.

Instead, we were forced to wait for two brave women who subjected themselves to unimaginable trauma and accusations of lying by Donaldson’s expensively-assembled legal team, in order to bring a predator to justice.

The DUP has announced that it will hold an independent inquiry as to how Donaldson was able to rise through the party while behaving in such a manner. Jim Gamble, former Head of Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, has been appointed to lead the review.

Future of the Windsor Framework

The ramifications of Donaldson’s conviction extend outside the DUP. The fact is that the very structures which allowed power sharing to be resumed in 2024 are in place because Jeffrey Donaldson negotiated them, sold it to the DUP membership, and hand picked his deputy First Minister.

The TUV leader Jim Allister was immediately out of the blocks and went further than expected, accusing the UK Government of blackmailing Donaldson to enshrine the Irish Sea Border, which Donaldson pretended the Windsor Framework did.

Allister said following the former DUP leader’s conviction: “It is inconceivable that the Government was unaware of his proclivities and the idea of such being used as leverage is far from fanciful.

“His about-turn from ‘unalterable opposition’ to the protocol to protocol facilitator was telling. From sharing platforms with me and others in robust opposition, he somersaulted to lying salesmanship of the phoney ‘Safeguarding the Union’ document.”

The UK Government has categorically denied Allister allegations, branding them “deeply distasteful and absolute nonsense”.

Despite this, it has since emerged that although Victim A and Victim B only made their complaints to the PSNI in March 2024, the PSNI was aware of the possibility that Donaldson could have carried out the abuse from informal conversations with Complainant B in 2023, and would have been gathering intelligence on the then-DUP leader.

In 2023, Donaldson was keeping power sharing down at Stormont and was involved in anti-Protocol rallies with Allister and loyalist activist Jamie Bryson against the Irish Sea Border.

There is no evidence that Donaldson was blackmailed. To put it plainly, the stakes would likely have been too low for the UK Government as the activities of Northern Ireland are a barely relevant footnote in UK politics.

However, the ability of the TUV and others to question the credibility of what is now consistently called the ‘Donaldson deal’ cannot be underestimated and could have far-reaching consequences for the future of power sharing, especially if the DUP pays an electoral price for the crimes of its former leader.

Victims

Questions abound regarding the political implications of this shocking chain of events, as well as questions around safeguarding in the Presbyterian Church and Donaldson’s associations with Enoch Powell and James Molyneaux.

However, what emerged though the trial is that, for decades, many people throughout Northern Ireland were misled by an evil individual who inflicted pain and suffering on two young girls while claiming to be whiter than white.

Judge Paul Ramsey said Donaldson will serve a lengthy prison sentence for his crimes. However, the fact that his victims were accused of being liars through the trial process, and that Victim B, the victim of rape while of primary school age, was asked by a defence barrister why she did not “scream and shout”, shows that in spite of progress since the Gillen Review, there is still a way to go if victims are to be fully supported through a trial process.

Much has emerged about Donaldson’s conduct and questions will abound for months to come for the DUP and the future of politics here. However, the fact that this dangerous man is now imprisoned is down to two people: Victim A and Victim B.

While elements of the media and politicians have sat on information about Donaldson’s personal conduct for decades, the two people who took a stand and showed the ultimate level of courage and bravery are the two women who suffered the most because of his actions.

The media and political circles will have much to grapple with and learn from how Donaldson has been allowed to rise through politics. However, Victim A and Victim B have not only secured justice for themselves, but have given a service in protecting people from the criminal sex offender, paedophile, and rapist who spent decades pontificating to the people of Northern Ireland about morality while he was abusing children and causing lasting damage to our politics.