Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson sentenced to 15 years for child sexual abuse, crimes spanned 1985 to 2008 against two girls, 2020 letter expressed regret four years before victims went to police, party of moral probity has not said who knew what and when

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Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson sentenced to 15 years for child sexual abuse – latest updates theguardian.com

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Jeffrey Donaldson, who led Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party from 2021 until 2024, has been sentenced to 15 years in prison for sexual offences against two women committed when they were children. The crimes span more than two decades, from 1985 to 2008.

A jury convicted Donaldson in June of 18 counts: one of rape, 13 of indecent assault and four of gross indecency. The trial at Newry Courthouse heard that ten of the offences related to the older complainant, referred to as Complainant B, who testified that Donaldson put his hands down her underwear, pulled her legs apart with his feet and raped her when she was of primary school age. "What happened that night will live with me forever," she told the jury.

Complainant A, who was abused from 1999 to 2008, testified that she was first abused at primary school age and that one incident in which Donaldson put his tongue in her mouth had been "laughed off" by both Donaldson and his wife Eleanor. Both women gave evidence from a separate room, using special court measures so they did not have to face the former politician. At a pre-sentence hearing in September, they sat in the public gallery alongside the police team that secured the conviction.

The trial also heard about a letter Donaldson wrote to Complainant A in June 2020 expressing "regret" for "all the hurt, pain and distress I have caused" — four years before she went to the police. Asked under cross-examination why she waited until 2024, she answered: "I knew this would be an extremely public affair, involving media. It was a huge, huge decision."

A Presbyterian minister who had provided pastoral support to Complainant A told the jury that Donaldson sent him a message in 2023 asking for a meeting; the minister replied that it would be inappropriate. Donaldson led the DUP until 2024, stepping down only when the charges became public. The party has spent decades marketing itself as the guardian of moral probity in Ulster unionism — a brand built on family values, religious conviction and opposition to what it portrayed as the moral laxity of its opponents.

The sentence closes the criminal case but leaves the political one open. Donaldson held the party leadership, and a Westminster seat, throughout the years the letter suggests he knew what he had done. The question the DUP has not answered is who in the party's upper ranks knew about the allegations, and when.