Emma Little-Pengelly, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, has said she was “completely floored” when she first learned of the arrest of former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson for sex offences.Donaldson (63) was convicted of 18 counts of child sex abuse last month, including one count of rape, committed against two women when they were children.The former Lagan Valley MP, who is in custody in Maghaberry prison outside Belfast ahead of a sentencing hearing in September, is appealing his conviction.Little-Pengelly worked with Donaldson for more than 20 years and said he was “somebody that I thought I knew”.She was now “confronted with the fact that I clearly didn’t know this person at all”.Paedophiles such as Donaldson are “master manipulators”, she said.“When talking to people ... who worked with him over those 20 years, they’re absolutely floored,” she told the BBC Red Lines podcast. ”They’re shocked and, of course, utterly repulsed by this.”Multiple stories have emerged since Donaldson’s conviction about his behaviour, including heavy drinking, a visit to a gay sauna and his affairs with women.[ Jeffrey Donaldson’s not-so-secret double life leaves DUP in turmoilOpens in new window ]Police confirmed earlier this month it had received a complaint about an alleged “nonrecent offence” after the Belfast Telegraph reported an alleged sexual assault by Donaldson on a woman in the DUP Westminster offices in 2016.Little-Pengelly said there shouldn’t be a “conflation” of the issues and the focus should be on the “sickening and repulsive” child sex abuse he “hid from people”.“He’s been convicted of being a paedophile and a rapist, and yes, there’s all of these other allegations, but they absolutely pale into insignificance of that,” she said.“The focus should always be on the fact that he’s been convicted of being a rapist and a paedophile, and that the victims of that have gone through a terrible ordeal to get justice.”Little-Pengelly said she was unaware of allegations prior to his arrest in 2024, adding that she would “never, ever cover up or try to hide the sexually inappropriate behaviour of any person”.She first started to work with him when she was in her mid-20s and said that no one ever warned her to “watch out for this guy”.She added: “I did not find him sleazy to me at all. Nothing within him gave me a sense that he was a sexual predator.”[ Political fallout from Jeffrey Donaldson’s conviction shows no signs of going awayOpens in new window ]During a St Patrick’s Day trip to Washington 20 years ago, Donaldson reportedly kissed an unnamed female politician and was so drunk that he vomited on a taxi driver on the way home.At the time, Little-Pengelly was a special adviser to the First and Deputy First Minister’s Office and attended the trip.She said she found it “astounding” that people had not been talking about his behaviour for the past 20 years.“If any politician was running around acting in that way, I think it would have been the talk of St Patrick’s in [Washington] DC amongst the many, many, people from Northern Ireland that go out there.”An independent review ordered by the DUP into Donaldson is under way and will investigate “what information was known” within the party about his “inappropriate conduct”.Little-Pengelly said she hoped the review would “absolutely clarify exactly who knew what”.“I suspect it will make clear that nobody had any inkling whatsoever that this person was who he has now come to light to be.”