{"id":555501,"date":"2026-07-18T04:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T04:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/555501\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T04:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T04:17:14","slug":"donaldson-to-appeal-conviction-for-rape-sexual-offences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/555501\/","title":{"rendered":"Donaldson to appeal conviction for rape, sexual offences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson is to appeal his conviction for rape and 17 other sexual offences charges.<\/p>\n<p>The 63-year-old was<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/courts\/2026\/0622\/1579576-jeffrey-donaldson-court\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"> found guilty by unanimous verdict by a jury of seven men and five women at Newry Crown Court last month after a four week trial.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>He was convicted of one count of rape, 13 counts of indecent assault and four of gross indecency against two women while they were children.<\/p>\n<p>The former MP was remanded into custody to Maghaberry Prison near Lisburn in Co Antrim to await sentencing in the autumn.<\/p>\n<p>The appeal was confirmed this afternoon by his solicitor, John McBurney.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I can confirm having lodged this afternoon on behalf of Jeffrey Donaldson appeal papers with the relevant office of the Court of Appeal,&#8221; he said<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson is to appeal his conviction for rape and 17 other sexual offences charges.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520676,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-555501","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\/555501","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=555501"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555501\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}