Debate contribution: Jeffrey Donaldson: Further Revelations
Debate contribution by Ms Emma Sheerin on .
- MLA
- Ms Emma Sheerin
- Party at the time
- Sinn Féin
- Date
- 29 June 2026
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Matter of the Day
- Heading
- Jeffrey Donaldson: Further Revelations
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5644532
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I thank my colleague Deirdre Hargey for bringing this matter before the House. It is a matter of huge public interest. Anyone who knows Deirdre knows that she has always been and is still a powerful advocate for the most vulnerable, including all who have been subject to abuse. Last week, the news that Jeffrey Donaldson had been found guilty of the sexual abuse of children, including rape, shocked and horrified us all. The details of his crimes are disgusting and invoke profound sympathy for the brave women who had the tenacity to tell their story in court. None of us can imagine how they feel and what they have gone through, but we send them our sincere support and respect. What has made their ordeal even more disturbing is the level of hypocrisy involved. For many years, Donaldson used his position of power to abuse and to escape justice. He presented himself as a role model. We now know that that was bogus and that his public persona was a deception. He deployed his faith not only to cover his horrific behaviour but to promote a false and harmful morality in, as others have said, the most sanctimonious of manners. In the days since the guilty verdict, many in the DUP have admitted that they knew that Donaldson was not what he pretended to be. It is now obvious that many at the most senior levels of the DUP leadership, including former leader Edwin Poots, were aware of the alarmingly inappropriate behaviour by Donaldson, yet they did nothing. Knowing about his deceit and deception, his double life and double standards, the DUP elected him as its leader. That decision defies any reasonable or rational explanation.
286 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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