{"id":522811,"date":"2026-06-28T15:33:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/522811\/"},"modified":"2026-06-28T15:33:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-28T15:33:13","slug":"call-for-probe-into-what-psni-knew-about-donaldson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/522811\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for probe into what PSNI knew about Donaldson"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party Doug Beattie has said the Police Ombudsman must begin an investigation into what the PSNI knew regarding Jeffrey Donaldson&#8217;s child sex offences.<\/p>\n<p>Last Monday Donaldson, a former leader of the DUP, was found guilty of rape and 17 other sexual offences.<\/p>\n<p>His two victims were young girls when he targeted them.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/001b8539-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nFormer leader of the Ulster Unionists Doug Beattie<\/p>\n<p>In a statement this morning Mr Beattie, an MLA for Upper Bann, said a number of individuals had since come forward indicating that concerns were raised about Donaldson&#8217;s behaviour, with some suggesting knowledge of victims or of predatory behaviour.<\/p>\n<p>He said that, of particular concern, were suggestions that a senior safeguarding officer within the PSNI might have held intelligence relating to Donaldson&#8217;s behaviour up to a year before his arrest.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Beattie observed that, while it was understood that intelligence did not in itself constitute evidence, this raised fundamental and legitimate questions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party Doug Beattie has said the Police Ombudsman must begin an investigation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-522811","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\/522811","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=522811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}