Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson jailed for 15 years for child sexual abuse

Jeffrey Donaldson, the former leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, has been jailed for 15 years for sexually abusing two girls over more than two decades.

The sentence was handed down at Newry Crown Court on Thursday, completing the downfall of a politician who was once among the most powerful figures in Northern Irish unionism and a key voice at Westminster during the Brexit negotiations.

Donaldson, 63, was found guilty in June of 18 counts of sexual abuse, including one count of rape, committed between 1985 and 2008. The two women he abused were children at the time.

Judge Paul Ramsey said the offences merited a lengthy prison term. Donaldson was expected to be returned to Maghaberry prison, where he has been held since his conviction. He intends to appeal.

'A predator'

The victims, who cannot be identified and were known in court as Complainant A and Complainant B, described Donaldson as a predator who abused a position of trust.

Complainant B told the trial she was raped when she was of primary school age. She said that when she was older, at secondary school, he lifted her top and touched her breasts. The jury heard that Donaldson's wife, Eleanor, witnessed part of that incident and walked away.

Complainant A said the abuse began when she was of primary school age. She told the court she had woken in the night with a sexual feeling, and later suffered nightmares about "men doing horrible things to children".

In victim impact statements read to the court, the women described the lasting damage. Complainant A wrote of shame and anger that her childhood had been "stolen". The prosecution said Complainant B had struggled so badly with the legacy of the abuse that she had at times wished she could die.

Prosecutor Rosemary Walsh told the trial that both women had kept their memories "locked away inside" until turning points in adult life led them to go to the police in 2024.

Apologies and a letter

The jury heard that in the 1990s one of the victims told a pastor about the abuse, after which Donaldson met her and apologised at a Christian centre in County Antrim.

Prosecutors also showed the jury a letter Donaldson wrote to Complainant A in 2020, in which he expressed regret for causing "hurt, pain and distress" and asked forgiveness for his "sinful nature".

Donaldson denied wrongdoing throughout. He told the trial that the apologies related to other matters.

His wife Eleanor, 60, was found unfit to stand trial on mental health grounds. She instead faced a trial of the facts, a process that tests the evidence without leading to a criminal conviction. The jury found that she had aided and abetted her husband's offending.

From knighthood to prison cell

Until his arrest in March 2024, Donaldson was seen as the embodiment of respectable unionism. Born into a Presbyterian family in Kilkeel, County Down, he rose through the Ulster Unionist Party before defecting to the DUP in 2004.

He was MP for Lagan Valley for more than a quarter of a century, was knighted for political services in 2016 and became DUP leader in 2021. He resigned the leadership immediately after he was charged.

He played a central role in the party's response to post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland, and in the deal that restored power-sharing at Stormont in early 2024 – weeks before his arrest.

After his conviction in June, the King stripped him of his knighthood.

Pressure on the party

The DUP has disowned its former leader and condemned his crimes. But the case has brought difficult questions for the party, amid allegations from some quarters that other misbehaviour by Donaldson – including drunkenness and sexual harassment – had been overlooked. The party has faced a backlash from some of its own supporters over those claims.

The sentencing drew a heavy police and media presence to Newry, about 40 miles south of Belfast.

Children's charities have long said that cases involving powerful and trusted adults can take decades to come to light, because victims fear they will not be believed. In this case, it was more than 35 years after the abuse began that the two women went to police.

Donaldson's planned appeal means the legal process is not yet over. For his victims, however, Thursday's sentence marks the moment a court formally set out the scale of what was done to them.