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About a week before Jeffrey Donaldson’s trial for historical sex offences began at Newry Crown Court, journalists received a press release highlighting the sheer level of attention the case would attract.
They were reminded that there was likely to be significant media interest in the case. While every effort would be made to accommodate as many members of the press as possible, seating within the courtroom was to be strictly limited to ten places.
However, due to the high interest, Courtroom five was to be designated as an overflow courtroom facility for the media, with the room able to accommodate a further 40 members of the press, who would be able to observe proceedings live via the Justice Video Platform.
The public interest in Donaldson’s trial and its outcome is enormous. The fallout from Monday’s guilty verdict, which represents perhaps the most spectacular fall from grace of any person in Northern Ireland public life, wil continue.
This was a man who, at the time of his resignation over the allegations in 2024, was the longest-serving MP from Northern Ireland in Westminster.
A man regarded as mild-mannered and affable and at the top tier of respectable society, who had spent his last months as a public representative as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party negotiating a deal with Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Government that reinstated power-sharing at Stormont – ending a two-year long boycott of the institutions in Belfast by the DUP.
This was a man who wore his self-professed Christianity not just on his sleeve, but literally on the lapel of his suit jacket. He showed up daily during the lengthy trial wearing the silver plated fish pin.
The pin, known as the Ichthys or Jesus fish, is a piece of Christian jewellery (an ancient acronym from the Greek word ichthys) which stands for “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour.”
Usually worn as a quiet display of faith, the fish symbol stood out as Donaldson, suited and booted, walked into the courtroom daily during those four weeks amidst the frenzied clicking of camera shutters from press photographers to face the most horrendous charges – rape and sexual assault on children.
Northern Ireland, we all know, has had its fair share of horrible murder trials and abuse cases. But there is something so staggeringly horrific about the charge of rape against a primary school aged child and the abuse of another that it leaves people genuinely horrified.
Looking back at some of the frightening details laid out during the trial by the two women we can now officially call victims, and the life we now know Donaldson led behind closed doors, one can only presume Donaldson’s image of God-fearing Christian was fake.
Some of his old interviews are now resurfacing, including one with Premier Christian Magazine from 2021. When asked how his faith shaped his day to day life, Donaldson responded in part: “It’s also about giving people a second chance. It’s about recognising that sometimes in life, we have to forgive others for what they do to us. Also, promoting a spirit of reconciliation – as Jesus taught us, we are to be a people of peace. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Was there a clue in that answer? Donaldson often spoke proudly about being a socially conservative Christian, and counted himself among those who felt he was sometimes disrespected due to his faith. It now sounds less like sincerity, and more like Donaldson was trying to reinvent himself as some sort of victim.
The implication is often that it would be wrong for Christians to doubt the sincerity of the Christianity of others.
“Judge not, that you not be judged” is another one of those famous teachings from the apostle Matthew that even the most non-believing of liberals love to throw out when given half a chance. But now that Donaldson’s carefully curated image as a clean-cut man of faith – a sort of light in the darkness if you will – has unravelled, the question I’m left with is: Is it really so easy to manipulate Christians?
Maybe clinging onto a supernatural belief that he could be forgiven helped Donaldson – a now convicted paedophile – to attempt some sick internal justification for the horrors of his crimes. Yet I watched some of the live proceedings through the media link, and Donaldson appeared very different from a man who was contrite.
He was unruffled in the witness box last week. Brazen, even, as he sat with his arms crossed in front of him, jotting down notes on a piece of paper and seeming to answer each interrogation with ease. His approach was this: Deny, deny, and deny again. Donaldson, in his arrogance, repeatedly falsely asserted that the victims were lying.
“With regard to the allegations against me, they are not true,” insisted a thoroughly defiant Donaldson.
“I do not accept at all that this was about me going to seek forgiveness for alleged sexual abuse. That was never, ever, ever, the topic of any conversation between me and anyone linked to that meeting, and it needn’t have been, and it wasn’t required because it never happened,” said a straight-faced Donaldson during his time on the stand last week.
He had been asked about a face-to-face encounter with victim B in the 1990s at the Christian Family Centre in Armoy in Antrim.
“The only person telling lies is you, Mr Donaldson,” the female prosecuting barrister told Donaldson, to which he shot back: “No, not true, not true.” As Donaldson protested, the barrister remarked that it was him who had been “sinful” and “deceitful.” This was how the cross-examination proceeded for several hours.
The trial uncovered that, as a teenager, the second victim in the case had disclosed the abuse to a pastor at the facility and that a meeting was subsequently arranged by David and Linda Hoy who ran the centre. Both victim B and the Hoys testified that upon arrival, Donaldson stated, “I know what this is about,” before apologising and asking for forgiveness – to which the complainant agreed.
The trial heard separately that a church pastor said the victim told him she could not report the abuse because it would destroy the former DUP leader’s political reputation.
It seems abundantly more likely that Donaldson was anything but a Christian at heart—instead, he was confident he could fool the public into thinking he was so upright that such terrible allegations would seem inconceivable. And he leaned into that false persona while calling the victims liars. As for the Christians who knew about the allegations, did Donaldson’s pleas for forgiveness impede justice? It certainly seems that way.
There are many Christian communities where too much importance is given to the veneer of respectability – but this defeats the purpose of being a Christian. The court, when told about the Armoy meeting, heard that Mr Donaldson spoke first – “he said I know what this is about, he said I am sorry and can you please forgive me.”
The witness, Mr Hoy, said that Complainant B was upset but she “did say she forgave him”. Mr Hoy said he asked B if she wanted to “take this any further,” and she said no.
MANIPULATED CHRISTIANITY
Looking at the scenario those words painted, it seem that, for Donaldson, that was an ideal outcome. Isn’t it likely that a man who clearly knew that the Christian principles of meekness and the commandment to forgive seventy times seven could be manipulated to help him escape justice would abuse that? There is a lesson in that for the rest of us.
The trial also heard that in 2023, Donaldson reached out to a Presbyterian minister supporting Complainant A, messaging that he wanted to find a way to “repent before them as I have before the Lord”. Donaldson’s defense later claimed these whatsapp apologies were regarding unrelated infidelities in his marriage, and not child abuse. Again, that desire for ‘repentance’ seems utterly contrived and a desire to cover-up and escape investigation and justice being served.
Donaldson’s arrest sparked internal investigations within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (PCI) which uncovered severe safeguarding failures. The church admitted it had “failed to make referrals to statutory authorities when these were required,” prompting an investigation by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) into the institution’s handling of child abuse concerns.
There are also big issues for unionism, and the question remains whether the DUP will ever recover from Donaldson’s downfall. There are many Conservative Christians in the party, who have rushed to denounce their former leader. Perhaps the DUP are just as shocked as the rest of the Ulster public, but then again we all know that public condemnation costs little when the verdict is already in.
Sources within the DUP who worked closely with Donaldson remarked in recent days that they felt that they never really knew him – that it was impossible to get below surface level. Donaldson, they recalled, never volunteered to tell colleagues how he spent his weekends at home in Dromore with his wife Eleanor (who was also found to have aided and abetted the abuse).
Colleagues have remarked on Donaldson’s dual personality, and his ability to live a double life. While he seemed to convey, during the trial, that he begrudged and even regretted spending so much time in London as an MP, those who travelled with him said he appeared to love his life across the water He rarely had a drink out of his hand, whereas back home in Northern Ireland he wouldn’t touch a drop.
This is a man who was on track to becoming First Minister, had a knighthood and was a powerful member of the Orange Order.
Were concerns, rumours, questions or allegations known within the institutional and political circles Donaldson occupied? If they existed, were they suppressed or managed away? Did certain people’s careers or positions of influence depend on maintaining silence? Did some proactively look the other way, or were people genuinely fooled by Donaldson’s carefully curated image?
From the information available, rumours may have existed about Donaldson’s double life in London, but none of those rumours seem to have had anything to do with sexual abuse, according to DUP sources. Evidence presented in court points to a situation where nobody was aware what Donaldson was doing until the victims came forward.
Others have questioned, however, how a meeting could have taken place with a Donaldson victim in the 1990s, yet his actions remained under wraps.
It is no secret, and it would be remiss not to mention, that Sinn Fein, the biggest nationalist party in Northern Ireland, has faced allegations of politically motivated cover-up over sexual abuse.
It wasn’t until 2009 that it was revealed that the brother of Gerry Adams, Liam Adams, had confessed to him in 2000 that he had sexually abused his own daughter. Gerry Adams, president of the party at the time, did not report it to the police until 2007.
His brother was convicted of ten counts of rape and sexual abuse in 2013.
Later, in 2018, Mary Lou McDonald expressed regret for how the party handled Máiría Cahill’s allegation of rape. Cahill alleged she was raped as a teenager by an IRA man and that Sinn Fein and the IRA tried to cover it up.
Cahill, speaking out this week said: “The difference with reporting on what Sinn Fein figures knew about cases linked to republicans was that the party had covered up the abuse. The DUP did not.”
We may begin to get some answers to these questions as the fallout begins, and those answers will be vital if public trust is to be restored.
One thing that is indisputable though, is that Donaldson used Christianity as a tool of manipulation, and the Presbyterian Church failed his victims.
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