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\nThe case was listed for a hearing at Newry Crown Court this morning<\/p>\n
The case of former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, who is accused of sexual offences, has been adjourned again.<\/p>\n
The case was listed for a hearing at Newry Crown Court this morning.<\/p>\n
The lawyers have been waiting for a report on the state of Eleanor Donaldson’s health.<\/p>\n
59-year-old Ms Donaldson faces five charges including aiding and abetting her husband.<\/p>\n
She denies the charges.<\/p>\n
An assessment was carried out on her before Christmas on behalf of the defence but the court was told this morning that the medical report was not ready.<\/p>\n
A defence barrister told the court they’d been in contact with the physician and had been told he was “working on it”, that it was “imminent”.<\/p>\n
The expert had been told the matter was “pressing”, the barrister said.<\/p>\n
\nThe case was listed for a hearing at Newry Crown Court this morning<\/p>\n
Judge Paul Ramsey said he was “disappointed” that the report had not been finalised when the examination had been carried out last month.<\/p>\n
But he said he would adjourn the case for one week in the expectation that the report would be completed by then.<\/p>\n
“We will hopefully be in a position then to progress the matter,” he said.<\/p>\n
He listed the case for another hearing next Friday, 30 January.<\/p>\n
Neither defendant appeared for today’s short hearing.They have been excused from recent hearings and it has been 11 months since either has been seen in court.<\/p>\n
63-year-old Mr Donaldson has pleaded not guilty to 18 charges including one count of rape, four counts of gross indecency and 13 charges of indecent assault.<\/p>\n
The offences allegedly involve two victims and are said to have occurred over a 23-year period between 1985 and 2008.<\/p>\n
Issues around Ms Donaldson’s health have delayed the progress of the case.<\/p>\n
A trial date has already been set twice and postponed twice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The case of former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson, who is accused of sexual offences, has been adjourned again.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92494,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-259786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92494"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}