Debate contribution: Jeffrey Donaldson: Sentencing

Debate contribution by Ms Diana Armstrong on 19 October 2026.

MLA: Ms Diana Armstrong
Party at the time: Ulster Unionist Party
Date: 19 October 2026
Type: Debate contribution
Business: Matter of the Day
Heading: Jeffrey Donaldson: Sentencing
Assembly identifier: Official Report component 5795256

Text

Last Thursday, Jeffrey Donaldson was sentenced to 15 years for the sexual abuse of two children. It is difficult to say those words aloud, and it will have been even harder for the two women whose childhoods he took and for their families to hear what was read out in court. My thoughts are with them today. What those two women did took extraordinary courage. They sat in a courtroom in front of a man who had abused them, and they told the truth.
They were called liars: they were not liars. A jury believed them, and now a judge does too.
Justice has been done. It is not perfect justice — there is no such thing in a case like this — but the sentence handed down last Thursday says plainly what needed to be said: that this man committed the most serious crimes against children and that no career, title or office that he once held could ever place him beyond the reach of the law. Today, he is a convicted child sex offender, and that is how he will be known for the rest of his life. I want to say one other thing because it matters. The courage of those two women has reached further than their own case. Since the verdict in June, charities and support services in Northern Ireland have told us that they have seen more people coming forward — people who had carried their experiences of abuse sometimes for decades — who felt able, perhaps for the first time, to pick up the phone. That is the quiet legacy of what those two women did. It will outlast every headline about the case. If there is anyone watching or listening who is carrying something of their own — something that they have never told anyone — please know this: you will be believed if you come forward. There are people who are ready to help you. You are not alone. There is still more work to do. My party, the Ulster Unionist Party, is undertaking an independent safeguarding review of Jeffrey Donaldson's 21 years of membership of our party. That review is live. It will report. My party has committed to acting on what it finds. We owe those two women and every survivor who found their voice because of them nothing less. However, today is a day for the simplest thing that I can say in the Chamber: those women were believed; he is in prison; and the bravery that they have shown will carry a long way beyond the courtroom where it was finally recognised.

435 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

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