Sir Jeffrey wrote her a letter in June 2020, which was read out in court on Thursday, in which he expressed “regret” for the “hurt, pain and distress” he had caused.<\/p>\n
Complainant A previously told the court she thought the letter was an attempt by him “to apologise for perhaps the abuse which had occurred”.<\/p>\n
However, Vaughan said that is not the “proper context”.<\/p>\n
The lawyer also claimed that Complainant A had not made the police aware of the context when she gave them the letter after they interviewed her in March 2024.<\/p>\n
Vaughan put it to her: “This has nothing to do with you and sexual assault.”<\/p>\n
He stated Sir Jeffrey was apologising for other “behaviour”.<\/p>\n
Complainant A said she believed the letter was “an apology for what he did to me”.<\/p>\n
“He’s a very clever man.<\/p>\n
“He would never write out what he has done in a letter but he could heavily suggest and hint that he was sorry for it.<\/p>\n
“In his own way, he’s using that letter as a form of apology but it’s not an apology.<\/p>\n
“You can acknowledge that you have sinned. There’s no detail of what that sin was.”<\/p>\n
She said that was “not enough”.<\/p>\n
Vaughan later referred to various communications between Complainant A and Sir Jeffrey which, he suggested, showed a “friendly banter” at variance with the abuse allegations.<\/p>\n
Complainant A also rejected the lawyer’s claims that the alleged sexual abuse incidents never happened.<\/p>\n
She alleges that in three incidents, the 63-year-old rubbed her breasts, kissed her inappropriately and shone a light, possibly a torch, on her genital area.<\/p>\n
Complainant A alleged that the former DUP leader’s wife, Lady Eleanor Donaldson, had witnessed the incident when he had rubbed her chest with his hand under her clothing, but did not intervene.<\/p>\n
“The facts are the facts and I’m sticking to those,” she said.<\/p>\n
Sir Jeffrey denies acts of gross indecency and indecent assault against her when she was a child, between 1999 and 2008.<\/p>\n
Other alleged offences, dating back to 1985, including a charge of rape, relate to a second woman, Complainant B, when she was also a child.<\/p>\n
Lady Donaldson faces five related charges of aiding and abetting, which she has denied.<\/p>\n
She has been found unfit for a conventional trial under the Mental Health (Northern Ireland) Order.<\/p>\n
Instead, a trial of the facts is being held in which she will not participate.<\/p>\n
The trial was adjourned on Friday afternoon and will resume on Monday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sir Jeffrey wrote her a letter in June 2020, which was read out in court on Thursday, in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":610449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-610448","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\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610448","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=610448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/610449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=610448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=610448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=610448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}