PSNI and DUP failings on paedophile Jeffrey Donaldson emerge

Details have begun to emerge of failures by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to act against paedophile Jeffrey Donaldson at an earlier stage.

On 22 June, a court convicted the former DUP leader on child sex abuse charges, including rape.

MLA Doug Beattie said the Police Ombudsman must look into what the PSNI may have known about Donaldson’s horrific crimes.

Beattie recently resigned from the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), and is now an independent MLA.

The Police Ombudsman’s role is to investigate potential police service failures.

Beattie said:

Of particular concern are suggestions that a senior safeguarding officer within the PSNI may have held intelligence relating to Donaldson’s behaviour up to a year before his arrest.

His comments follow BBC reporting on how the PSNI knew Jeffrey Donaldson was a suspected child abuser “a year before he was named to police”. The complainants abused by Donaldson reported him to the police in March 2024.

However, the BBC wrote:

In March 2023, a meeting took place at the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s headquarters between Complainant A and her partner, a detective chief inspector (DCI) and the church’s head of safeguarding at the time, Dr Jacqui Montgomery-Devlin.

Jeffrey Donaldson concerns not escalated

While Complainant A did not name Donaldson in that meeting, Montgomery-Devlin told the BBC that the detective chief inspector “discovered and was able to confirm to me that it was Jeffrey Donaldson”.

Former chief superintendent, Norman Baxter, stated:

…suspicion alone should have triggered a series of actions which would quickly reach the top of the PSNI, and possibly the government.

He added:

That information would have become what we call intelligence that indicated that Jeffrey Donaldson was alleged to have committed sex abuse.

We have a high profile politician who, as a constituency MP, has access to vulnerable adults, who could have access to young people.

Baxter and Beattie also both highlighted Donaldson’s sickening crimes as a national security risk, given anyone with knowledge of his actions could have used it to blackmail him.

Journalist Suzanne Breen pointed out that Donaldson’s role as a privy councillor granted him access to “high-level, sensitive State intelligence”.

What did MI5 know?

However, Breen credibly suggests it’s far-fetched to believe that intelligence services themselves had no knowledge of Donaldson’s horrific abuse of children.

She said Donaldson:

…managed to live a lie — rape a child and abuse another, visit a gay sauna, have numerous affairs, and sexually pester women — without a single red flag appearing on MI5’s radar?

And this all unfolds not over a few months or a few years but over four decades, which includes a war, a peace process, and high-level political negotiations. Only an utter idiot would swallow that line. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think that something’s not right here.

The mention of the ‘gay sauna’ is primarily relevant due to Donaldson’s homophobic animosity to equality laws.

It makes no sense to believe the likes of MI5 knew nothing about Donaldson. Especially given he was a Six Counties MP, a place where, as Breen points out, “the intelligence services had eyes on everything”.

Meanwhile, there is no question the DUP knew of appalling behaviour by its former leader.

The BBC said:

Former DUP MP Ian Paisley said that five years ago he was approached by a young woman who said she had been “exploited” by Donaldson.

The woman told Paisley:

Jeffrey Donaldson exploited me, that man used me and I want you to do everything in your power to make sure he is not the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party.

DUP’s ‘positively sinister’ actions

Donaldson’s abusive behaviour was on open display, including an occasion where the creep “sat on a female MLA’s lap and tried to kiss her while on a trip to the United States”.

In addition, the Belfast Telegraph highlights how the DUP backed a law that would ensure “anyone accused of a sex crime” would have:

…lifelong anonymity if they have been investigated by police but not charged — which extended to 25 years after death.

Telegraph writer Sam McBride described the DUP’s stance as appearing “positively sinister” in light of Donaldson’s conviction. The party would have stood to gain politically from opposing the law, as doing so would have exposed bungling by Alliance’s Naomi Long. Yet inexplicably, they did not, raising questions about the party’s motives.

In a vaguely-worded statement, the party has pledged to launch a “specialised and detailed independent review”. The scope, and whether the review’s findings will be made public, the party has yet to reveal.

It may ultimately be too late as former special adviser, David Graham, said the DUP might be damaged “beyond repair”.

If so, good riddance to this misogynistic, sectarian, homophobic, transphobic collection of genocide-supporting reprobates.

Featured image via Clodagh Kilcoyne/ Reuters