{"id":606228,"date":"2026-05-27T08:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T08:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606228\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T08:00:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T08:00:12","slug":"sir-jeffrey-donaldson-prosecution-to-open-case-against-ex-dup-leader-in-sex-abuse-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606228\/","title":{"rendered":"Sir Jeffrey Donaldson: Prosecution to open case against ex-DUP leader in sex abuse trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Donaldsons were arrested in their County Down home and charged on 28 March 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He resigned as DUP leader the next day and did not contest his Lagan Valley seat in the general election four months later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He is accused of rape, four counts of gross indecency and 13 counts of indecent assault.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The offences allegedly occurred between 1985 and 2008.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There are two alleged victims.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lady Donaldson will face a trial of the facts after being found unfit for a conventional trial under the Mental Health (Northern Ireland) Order.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Under a trial of the facts, she will not participate in proceedings. She was not in court for the trial&#8217;s opening day on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Donaldsons were arrested in their County Down home and charged on 28 March 2024. He resigned as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-606228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=606228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}