Former DUP leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, was found guilty of eighteen counts of child sex abuse, including rape, at Newry Crown Court. The jury also found that his wife, Lady Eleanor Donaldson, aided and abetted his offences against the two victims. Due to problems with her mental health, though, she faced only a ‘trial of facts’, which tested the evidence but did not result in a criminal conviction.
Whether voters punish the DUP for allowing a paedophile to influence its policies for two-and-a-half decades will become apparent next May
It would be impossible to exaggerate how shocking this verdict is to the Ulster public. Donaldson has been a household name in Northern Ireland for the past three decades.
In the wake of the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, he played a critical role in the rise of the DUP and the decline of David Trimble’s Ulster Unionist party. The Lagan Valley MP resigned from the UUP in 2003, alongside Fermanagh MLA Arlene Foster, having spent five years fighting the party’s leadership from within.
The pair’s decision to join the DUP entrenched its new-found position as the dominant unionist party in Northern Ireland; it edged ahead of the UUP for the first time in the Assembly election of November 2003, just a month before Donaldson and Foster defected. The addition of anti-agreement politicians, who were regarded as moderate and articulate, allowed the DUP to move on from its image as a party of unbending, Paisleyite hardliners.
