Knight of the Realm, Right Honourable member of the Privy Council, leader (until his arrest) of the largest Unionist party in the North, MP for three decades, UK trade envoy, former Assistant Grand Master of the Orange Order, and – lest we forget! – devout Presbyterian on a ‘mission from God’ – Sir Jeffery Donaldson has been found guilty on 18 counts of child sexual abuse. Among them, the rape of a primary-school child.
The horrific details of the case have been extensively reported, and there is no need to repeat them here. This hypocritical bastard – this preacher-from-the-pulpit, church-on-Sunday, fish-pin-on-the-lapel politician – led the party of ‘Christian family values’ and passionately defended the sanctity of the family against such ‘horrors’ as same-sex marriage and abortion.
All the while he was committing the most despicable sexual violence against vulnerable, tiny, young girls.
Alongside Donaldson, his wife, Eleanor Donaldson, was found to have aided and abetted his offences. She will, however, dodge any repercussions for her crimes as hers was a trial of the facts.
Donaldson now joins the long list of disgraced ‘Great Statesmen’ and establishment figures implicated in sexual scandals in recent years. From Kincora to the Epstein’s files, scandal after scandal has exposed the hypocrisy, corruption and moral decay festering beneath the respectable facade of the British and Unionist establishment.
Let Donaldson now rot in jail. But this whole rotten system – a system that promotes and protects such monsters – needs to be overthrown.
The scum rises to the top
The offences for which Donaldson was convicted spanned the years 1985 to 2008. Strikingly, this coincides almost exactly with his rise to the summit of political Unionism.
It was precisely in 1985 that Donaldson became the youngest member of the old Stormont Assembly. By 1997 he was elected MP, after – according to his approved biography – the Lord called on him to change his residency to the safe Unionist constituency of Lagan Valley.
Later, seeing the writing on the wall for the UUP, this opportunistic and unprincipled manoeuvrer jumped ship and joined the DUP – just as it happened to become the biggest party in the North. By 2008 he was an MLA, an MP, Junior Minister and a member of the Privy Council. His ascent within the DUP appeared unstoppable.
Many commentators have expressed astonishment that a man carrying such ‘skeletons’ in his closet would place himself so prominently in public life. Surely someone guilty of these crimes would avoid the spotlight rather than seek it?
But this misses the point entirely.
Don’t Kincora, the Epstein files, the royal hush money – etc. etc. etc. – prove exactly the opposite? The more you go up, the more the system protects its own. The more untouchable you become – and the more depraved you can become.
The system is in fact designed to let the very scum rise to the top. And people like Donaldson seek precisely the protection that comes from being the top scum.
‘On a mission from God’
To be sure, political power is not the only weapon wielded by Donaldson. This animal also cynically used religion at every step of his political ascent – and then again to try and escape accountability for his despicable crimes.
In 1997, when he prepared to run for MP, he evidently decided it was time to sort out his ‘skeletons’. Donaldson arranged a meeting with one of his victims at the Christian Family Centre in Armoy, where she lived for about a year.
It was in Armoy that she had first disclosed the abuse to the family that ran the centre and to a youth pastor. Incidentally, none of them reported the allegations to the police, instead they facilitated a meeting between her and Donaldson, at his request.
We can just imagine how that meeting unfolded. A young woman on the one side, her powerful abuser on the other, flanked by a pastor and a respectable Christian family. There the victim was pressured into “forgiving” Donaldson – after all isn’t that the Christian thing to do? And so, having made sure this woman was not going to cause him problems, Donaldson went on with his brilliant political career in Westminster.
Even more revealing is the ‘paper trail’ left by Donaldson in 2020. One of the victims explained that it was around that time she realised the extent of what happened to her as a child and started becoming “very angry”.
So Donaldson wrote her a letter, expressing “remorse” for his “sinful and selfish actions” for which he takes “full responsibility”. But you see, all is good now because he is “seeking God’s forgiveness” and he has seen himself “what amazing grace can do to lift a sinner from a pit of sin”. He concludes: “My hope and prayer is that God will help each of us. I pray especially for you… I believe God has great plans for you”.
In other words: please don’t go and tell that I used to sneak into your bedroom at night while you were sleeping to shine a torchlight in your private parts, the Christian thing to do would be forgiving a sinner. God will certainly appreciate that of you.
So here it is. This cunning individual not only sexually abused children, but then appealed to their faith in order to keep them quiet. Right until the trial itself he wore a fish pin on his lapel and lectured the court on how “we are all sinners” and every day we must “seek God’s forgiveness”. The hypocrisy is truly breathtaking!
Most evidently Donaldson – the child sexual abuser, serial adulterer and unscrupulous liar – didn’t believe a single word of it all. But what a convenient tool to cultivate an image of piety, rise to the top of political Unionism, and pressure his victims into silence.
In a way there is nothing new in this – only it is so blatantly and grotesquely exposed by Donaldson’s case. This is how those opportunists at the top of political Unionism – and the British imperialists before them – have operated for decades.
For them all religion is a weapon to cynically deploy when needed. They manipulate religious feelings of workers to push for their interests. Sometimes those interests can be of a political or economic nature. Other times it is about hushing sexual scandals…
Hypocrisy
It’s impossible to say whether this verdict will be the end of the story. One cannot help wondering: how many children and women has he abused or harassed? And who knew?
Already from the trial we learnt his wife had been aware for quite some time, together with multiple priests, the family running the Christian Centre in Amroy – and even the Head of Safeguarding for the Presbyterian Church, at least since early 2023. Yet none of these self-appointed defenders of “Christian family values” reported that the most powerful politician in the North of Ireland was a child abuser.
Even inside the DUP, Donaldson apparently had the reputation of something of a “sex pest” – or as a DUP member reported to the Belfast Telegraph: “I’ve known Jeffrey to be a creep for a long time.” And yet they still supported him in his leadership bid.
Let’s not forget, these are the same hypocrites who have the effrontery to talk about protecting women and children – igniting pogroms every time the perpetrator is an immigrant. All the while they promote to the top spot of their ‘community’ someone they know is a danger to women and children.
And what of those loyalist paramilitary leaders who only weeks ago ran amok through workers’ neighbourhoods in Belfast, leaving them in smoke – of course all to ‘protect our women and children’?
May we ask: have you set a date and location yet for the anti-Donaldson, anti-DUP, anti-Unionist-establishment riot? After all, haven’t they – and all their establishment chums – repeatedly proven to be the biggest threat to the safety of women and children?
We eagerly await for details.
Overthrow this rotten system
Donaldson’s spectacular downfall has been described as the biggest scandal to rock the political establishment in the North of Ireland in decades, if not ever since the foundation of the statelet. It will undoubtedly deepen the crisis of legitimacy facing the entire system – and particularly the anger, resentment and disillusionment felt in Protestant working-class communities.
Is it any surprise that the key political pillars of the Northern statelet are more and more discredited in the eyes of workers and youth?
Stormont and all its politicians are increasingly despised. The religious hold that the Unionist establishment once had on Protestant communities has steadily eroded. Identification with the main Protestant churches has fallen sharply in recent decades, particularly among the youth.
Donaldson’s case starkly exposes why. When culture, identity and religion are not used to feed workers a thin diet of sectarianism – in place of decent houses, jobs, a well-founded NHS etc. – they are cynically used to shield the powerful against consequences for their actions.
And when it comes to political Unionism, this verdict against the former leader of the main Unionist party can’t but deepen its long-term crisis.
The DUP has never recovered from the restoration of Stormont that Donaldson pushed through and his arrest shortly after. TUV’s Jim Allister has already seized the opportunity with both hands to attack the DUP, even insinuating that Donaldson was blackmailed by the secret services into restoring Stormont. The UUP meanwhile is in the midst of a quasi-civil war over its new leadership. That is, far from a ‘united Unionism’, the prospect is that of sharper and sharper conflict in preparation for next year’s election.
How many will have followed the trials and are sick to the stomach with all the details that have emerged? The same polished figures and champions of integrity that lecture us day in and day out about morality, integrity and civilisation – the same politicians that use and abuse religion and identity to promote themselves to the fore and keep themselves in power while decimating living standards of workers and youth – they are the one committing the most depraved acts against the most vulnerable people in society.
Donaldson is now in jail. But let’s be clear: This is not about a single man, nor party. It is this whole sick system that needs to be overthrown.
