Donaldson sat in the dock<\/a> at the back of the court while the recordings were played.<\/p>\nIn her first interview with police, Eleanor Donaldson was asked if she was guilty of the offences for which she had been arrested. She replied no.<\/p>\n
She then told police about an incident where she had gone to find her husband and he was in a room with Complainant B, who was a teenager at the time.<\/p>\n
The court has previously heard B allege that the former MP had lifted her top and touched her breasts.<\/p>\n
Eleanor Donaldson said: \u201cI just sort of remember just looking at him and saying what are you doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said when she asked her husband about it, he said it \u201cwas nothing\u201d and that he was \u201cjust talking\u201d.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cIn the years that came after that I never had any cause for concern ever, I never felt that apart from thinking that that was strange and what was that about and I asked Jeffrey about it and he just dismissed it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never had any other feeling that anything was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cI asked Jeffrey many times but he had never given me a reason for why he was there or what he was doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI asked him many times and it never came to anything and he never gave me any answers.\u201d<\/p>\n
When asked by the detective, if she had a \u201cclear view\u201d of what had happened, she said: \u201cI could just see that there were both standing there, but that was it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The detective asked her if she believed \u201csomething more\u201d had been going on.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cYes, because I was uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cEvery time I did ask I was met with a blank wall, it was not coming out.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just lived to the best of my ability and then other times it would start eating at me again because I just wanted to get to the bottom of it and even though all those years had passed still to the back of my mind because that\u2019s the type of person I am.\u201d<\/p>\n
The detective asked if she had ever witnessed any inappropriate behaviour between her husband and Complainant B.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cNo, absolutely nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The court previously heard that when Complainant B was a teenager she had visited the Christian Family Centre in Armoy where she met with Jeffrey Donaldson.<\/p>\n
Referring to this meeting, Eleanor Donaldson said: \u201cI didn\u2019t know this at the time and I didn\u2019t know it until many years had passed and in the course of conversation with him again, he said\u2026 the questions that you\u2019re asking me, that has been dealt with.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said her husband told her he had \u201casked for forgiveness\u201d, it was granted and \u201cthat was sorted\u201d.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cBut I never knew what that was because he wouldn\u2019t talk to me about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the circumstances of an alleged incident where Complainant B claims she was raped by Jeffrey Donaldson, Eleanor Donaldson said: \u201cI would say that didn\u2019t happen. Absolutely not, oh my goodness.\u201d<\/p>\n
She told police she was \u201cdevastated\u201d hearing about the allegation.<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cThat\u2019s totally outside my knowledge of what I would expect from him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eleanor Donaldson also told police she had no awareness of allegations made by Complainant A that she was sexually abused when she was a child.<\/p>\n
She said: \u201cI\u2019ve never been party or seen anything like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if she was aware of occasions where her husband had allegedly put his tongue in A\u2019s mouth, she said: \u201cUgh, no.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about the allegations made by both complainants, Eleanor Donaldson said: \u201cThis is a massive, massive shock.\u201d<\/p>\n
Earlier, the jury had heard a recording of Jeffrey Donaldson\u2019s final interview with police in 2024.<\/p>\n
He said that a letter he had written to Complainant A was not an apology for sex abuse.<\/p>\n
The trial previously heard that in 2020, Donaldson wrote to Complainant A expressing \u201cregret\u201d for the \u201churt, pain and distress\u201d he had caused her.<\/p>\n
In her evidence, the woman said she thought the letter was an attempt to \u201capologise\u201d for the alleged abuse.<\/p>\n
He told police: \u201cNone of that is to do with any allegation or any action involving sexual abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cI stand over everything I said in that letter and nowhere in that letter did I indicate nor was I alluding to incidents of sexual abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked if he believed the two complainants are lying, Donaldson said: \u201cI\u2019m saying that the specific allegations that have been put to me are untrue.\u201d<\/p>\n
A police officer asked him: \u201cDo you feel you\u2019ve had a fair opportunity to give your account?\u201d<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cYeah, yes.\u201d<\/p>\n
After lunch, the jury was played another police interview with Eleanor Donaldson in which she was asked about the letter her husband had sent to Complainant A in 2020.<\/p>\n
She told detectives she was aware of the letter but \u201cdidn\u2019t see it or know the content of it\u201d.<\/p>\n
When asked by a detective about how she felt about the allegations which had been set out, she responded: \u201cI\u2019m just in disbelief to be honest with you. Horrified.\u201d<\/p>\n
She added: \u201cIt\u2019s devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trial continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Donaldson\u2019s wife told police she was met with a \u201cblank wall\u201d when she repeatedly asked him about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":491827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1115,80056,42,208498,14062,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-491826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-crime","tag-eleanor-donaldson","tag-headlines","tag-jeffrey-donaldson-trial","tag-jeffrey-donaldson","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\/491826","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=491826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/491827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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