Diarmuid Pepper Reporting from Newry Crown Court
BACK IN 2017, Jeffrey Donaldson found himself at the very centre of UK political power.
Theresa May had called a snap general election less than a year after becoming British prime minister, following the post-Brexit vote resignation of David Cameron.
She had hoped to build up a healthy majority in the House of Commons, but instead a buoyant Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn gained 30 seats, while the Conservatives lost 13.
It meant that the ruling Conservative Party were nine seats short of a majority.
In return for £1 billion (€1.16 billion) for the Northern Ireland Executive, the DUP entered into a confidence-and-supply agreement with the Conservatives. Donaldson, who at the time was the DUP’s chief whip in Westminster, was at the centre of negotiations.
He later became heavily involved in talks to reach a Brexit deal with the European Union and helped block the Northern Ireland backstop which would have seen Northern Ireland remain in the EU single market and customs union.
The backstop was later dropped and replaced with the Windsor Framework, a simplified process for moving goods from Britain to Northern Ireland, which the DUP eventually agreed to after initial criticism.
In the middle of helping to broker Brexit deals, Donaldson found himself the leader of the DUP.
Today, less than a decade after being a Westminster power broker, Donaldson is in prison and on the sex offenders list, having been found guilty of 18 historical sexual offences, including one count of rape.
Upbringing
Born in 1962, Donaldson was brought up in the small coastal town of Kilkeel in Co Down.
Two of his cousins, Samuel Donaldson and Alex Donaldson, were RUC officers who were killed by the IRA in separate attacks.
Samuel died in a car bomb explosion in south Armagh in 1970, while Alex was killed in a mortar attack on Newry police station in 1985.
Donaldson joined the Orange Order aged 16 and soon afterwards became a member of the youth wing of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), which was the largest party in Northern Ireland at the time.
He also served in Kilkeel as a member of the Ulster Defence Regiment, which was established in 1970 and served with the British Army in Northern Ireland until 1992, when it was merged into the Royal Irish Regiment.
Donaldson previously stated that he entered politics and joined the Ulster Defence Regiment because of a “deep sense of injustice that I felt had been perpetrated against my people and specifically against my family”.
Political career
In 1982, he began working for then-UUP MP Enoch Powell and was the campaign manager for Powell’s successful reelection campaigns in 1983 and 1986.
Powell, best known for the infamous “rivers of blood” speech, left the Conservative Party in 1974 and later in the same year, won a seat for the UUP in south Down.
The Rivers of Blood speech, delivered at a Conservative Party meeting in 1968, criticised the then-Labour government’s proposed Race Relations Bill to outlaw discrimination in housing and employment.
Powell was sacked from the Conservative shadow cabinet the day after the speech and became a figurehead for opponents to immigration.
In 1985, aged 22, Donaldson’s own career in frontline politics began when he was elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly to represent his native south Down.
He also worked as the personal assistant of UUP leader James Molyneaux, and when Molyneaux stepped down as an MP in 1997, Donaldson was elected to Molyneaux’s Lagan Valley seat in Westminster.
Donaldson was tipped as a future UUP leader, but that role instead went to David Trimble, who became party leader in 1995 and led the UUP in the Good Friday negotiations.
Donaldson was part of the UUP’s negotiating team but was a major critic of the agreement and didn’t support it.
He disagreed with the reformation of the RUC, which would later be replaced by the PSNI, and argued that there needed to be clearer evidence of the IRA’s decommissioning of weapons.
On the morning the agreement was signed, Donaldson dramatically waked out of the talks.
From there, Donaldson openly disagreed with many of Trimble’s policies and supported bids to oust him from the UUP leadership.
In November 2003, back in a time when double-jobbing was allowed in Northern Ireland and politicians could simultaneously be members of Westminster and the Stormont Assembly, Donaldson was elected as a UUP MLA for Lagan Valley.
A month later, he joined Arlene Foster in resigning from the UUP.
Donaldson, Foster and fellow UUP defector Norah Beare then joined the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in January 2004.
DUP career
Donaldson won reelection to Westminster as a DUP candidate in 2005 but in 2009, he was one of the MPs caught up in an expenses scandal.
He later apologised for claiming back the cost of hotel pay-per-view films and repaid the money claimed, around £600 (€690).
However, he rose through the party ranks and became the DUP’s chief whip in Westminster in 2015.
In 2016, he then became the first DUP member to receive a knighthood as part of the late Queen Elizabeth’s 90th birthday honours list.
The following year, Donaldson was at the centre of UK politics as the DUP entered into a confidence-and-supply deal with Theresa May’s Conservatives after a disastrous 2017 election for her party.
The Conservatives had lost their Parliamentary majority and came to rely on the DUP’s 10 votes at Westminster.
This was at the height of the fractious Brexit negotiations and the DUP proved to be a thorn in May’s side and ruled out to support for her Northern Ireland backstop proposal as part of her withdrawal agreement.
The DUP found itself having outsized power within wider UK politics but when Boris Johnson became leader of the Conservatives in 2019, the DUP’s influence began to wane.
And when Johnson delivered a healthy parliamentary majority for the Conservatives following a snap general election in December 2019, any influence the DUP had in wider UK politics vanished.
DUP leadership
Arlene Foster had been appointed DUP leader in 2015 but resigned in 2021 amid Brexit discontent within the party, with many objecting to the emergence of an Irish Sea border.
The Irish Sea border prevented a hard border in Ireland, but the DUP opposed it and Foster argued that it would make Northern Ireland “separate from the UK”.
The DUP would later sign up to a simplified deal which created a “green lane” for goods moving between Britain and Northern Ireland, with limited checks and a reduction in paperwork.
Donaldson lost the leadership election sparked by Foster’s resignation, with Edwin Poots coming out on top.
But Poots lasted just 21 days in the role and Donaldson then became the party leader when he stood unopposed for the position in June 2021.
During his time as party leader, he presided over a two-year suspension of the Stormont Executive.
The DUP had boycotted the power-sharing institutions over post-Brexit trade agreements, an impasse which was broken in January 2024.
When the DUP returned to Stormont, Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill became First Minister, while Donaldson nominated Emma Little-Pengelly as Deputy First Minister.
Historical sexual abuse allegations
Less than two months after steering his party back into Stormont, a political bombshell hit the DUP.
Donaldson’s political career was ended almost instantly after he was arrested at his home on 28 March 2024.
Donaldson was charged with historical sexual offences, including rape.
His wife, Eleanor Donaldson, was also charged with aiding and abetting.
The DUP moved quickly to suspend him from the party and installed Gavin Robinson as party leader.
Speaking at the time, Robinson remarked that it was a “tremendous shock not just for myself personally or my colleagues within the DUP, but for the community right across Northern Ireland”.
On 24 April 2024, Donaldson first appeared in Newry Crown Court.
It took two attempts for him to successfully leave the courthouse, as a large crowd gathered on both occasions.
On the first occasion, the car was not ready to collect him, and he had to go back into the courthouse.
When he reappeared, a large crowd surrounded the car before he left Newry Courthouse.
In all, Donaldson faced 18 charges in respect of two complainants.
The charges included one count of rape and indecent assault and gross indecency, and spanned a period between 1985 and 2008.
In court, he was described as being “sinful and deceitful” and it came out in evidence that Donaldson had a “brief” affair in London in 2008.
It was also stated that his wife had planted a listening device in his car in 2020 after the discovery of “flirtatious” messages with a constituent.
Letter
In a 2020 letter sent to one of the complainants in the trial, Donaldson apologised for “all the hurt, pain and distress I have caused”. He denied that this letter related to sexual abuse.
He was also accused of using a complainant who accused him of rape as an “object”.
It was alleged that he put his hands down the underwear of one of the complainants, pulled her legs apart and sexually assaulted her.
And in a police interview that was played for the jury, one of the alleged victims said she was left “feeling dirty for a long time”.
This complainant said she had “spent her life watching him getting accolade after accolade”.
At Newry Crown Court, the jury took three days to find him guilty on all 18 charges.
His wife Eleanor was found to have committed fives acts of aiding and abetting.
As the verdict was read, Donaldson was expressionless and made no reaction.
Judge Paul Ramsey told him to expect a lengthy prison sentence and remanded him in custody until sentencing, on 25 September.
“Take Mr Donaldson down,” were the last words he word in the court.
Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson taken away to custody in back of a police van from Newry Crown Court @thejournal_ie pic.twitter.com/a0iub6nRuX
— Diarmuid Pepper (@Diarmuid_9) June 22, 2026
A large crowd of media and members of the public then awaited the departure of Donaldson, who the judge confirmed was now on a sex offenders registry.
And so Donaldson, once a Westminster kingmaker, left Newry Crown Court in the back of a police van.
In the hours following his conviction, current DUP leader Gavin Robinson described Donaldson’s acts as “wicked”, “filthy”, “vile”, “repugnant” and “predatory”.
https://t.co/O6Qjqt27j3 pic.twitter.com/TuyQEWrV7t
— DUP (@duponline) June 22, 2026
“No one, regardless of status or position, can ever be above the law and Jeffrey Donaldson is no exception,” said Robinson.
“Abuse, preying on the innocent, and taking advantage of the vulnerability of children in particular is evil.
“That Jeffrey Donaldson’s lies and cover-ups have been uncovered and the spotlight of justice shone upon them should serve as a reminder that perpetrators cannot outrun justice.”