‘Incomprehensible’: disbelief after Jeffrey Donaldson found guilty of historical sex charges

W hile Joe Biden feted Jeffrey Donaldson at the White House during St Patrick’s Day celebrations in March 2024 a handful of detectives back home in Northern Ireland were quietly completing the countdown to his unmasking. Weeks earlier Donaldson had steered the Democratic Unionist party ( DUP ) back to power-sharing at Stormont, a political feat that rebooted the Good Friday agreement and imbued a statesmanlike aura to his triumphant visit to Washington. The Lagan Valley MP looked like an accountant and spoke in a passionless monotone – an antithesis to his fire-breathing predecessor Ian Paisley – yet he had brokered a deal with Downing Street over Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit status in the UK and convinced his party to accept it. But days after his return from the US, on a damp, dark morning, the police swooped on his County Down home and everything Northern Ireland thought it knew about Donaldson imploded. The Presbyterian family man who wore a fish badge on his lapel to signify his Christian faith was charged with 18 sexual offences – one count of rape plus multiple counts of indecent assault and gross indecency against two young victims – and his wife, Eleanor, was charged with aiding and abetting the abuse. Two years later, the figure who stood convicted in the dock of courtroom one of Newry crown court appeared unchanged – immaculate suit, a bit jowly, no visible emotion – but was now a pariah. …