Northern Ireland's Donaldson found guilty of child sex offences

June 22 - The former leader of Northern Ireland's largest unionist party, Jeffrey Donaldson, was found guilty on Monday of historic child sex offences against two women when they were children in one of the highest-profile cases to be heard in the British-run region in recent times.

A jury at Newry Crown Court found Donaldson guilty of one count of rape, 13 counts of indecent assault and four counts of gross indecency against two complainants at dates between 1985 and 2008. He denied all charges.

Donaldson, 63, was one of Northern Ireland's best-known politicians when he was arrested and charged in March 2024. He immediately stepped down as head of the Democratic Unionist Party, founded by Protestant cleric Ian Paisley at the height of three decades of sectarian bloodshed, which ended after a 1998 peace deal.

He was Northern Ireland's longest-serving lawmaker in the British parliament, having been first elected in 1997 and had brokered a deal with the British government over post-Brexit trade two months prior to his arrest that allowed the DUP to end a boycott of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government.

He was knighted by the late Queen Elizabeth for his political services in 2016.

The jury found that Donaldson's wife, Eleanor, aided and abetted her husband. She has also denied the charges.

The court ruled her unfit to stand trial last month, due to mental health issues, meaning she could not face criminal conviction.

She instead faced a concurrent trial of the facts, where the jury was asked to decide whether or not she committed the offences, rather than whether she was guilty or not guilty. REUTERS