{"id":460147,"date":"2026-05-21T14:01:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:01:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/460147\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T14:01:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T14:01:09","slug":"judge-rules-on-trial-of-facts-for-eleanor-donaldson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/460147\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge rules on &#8216;trial of facts&#8217; for Eleanor Donaldson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A judge has ruled that a trial of facts for the wife of former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson will take place as part of his trial on sexual offences charges.<\/p>\n<p>Eleanor Donaldson has denied five charges including aiding and abetting her husband, who has denied 18 charges including one count of rape.<\/p>\n<p>Judge Paul Ramsey <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/ulster\/2026\/0520\/1574342-eleanor-donaldson\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">ruled yesterday that Ms Donaldson is unfit to face a criminal trial because of mental health issues<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>She will instead face a &#8220;trial of facts&#8221; with a jury asked to determine if she committed the offences, but she cannot be found guilty or go to jail.<\/p>\n<p>In a ruling at Newry Magistrates\u2019 Court this morning, the judge accepted an application by the Public Prosecution Service for the trials to be concurrent.<\/p>\n<p>He rejected an application from Jeffrey Donaldson\u2019s legal team for the processes to be separated and to run as two trials.<\/p>\n<p>That means the couple will stand trial together in front of the same jury, but the potential outcomes are different.<\/p>\n<p>The trial is scheduled to begin with jury selection next Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Jeffrey Donaldson has pleaded not guilty to 18 charges including one of rape, four counts of gross indecency and 13 charges of indecent assault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A judge has ruled that a trial of facts for the wife of former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-460147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460147","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=460147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}