The former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson wrote a letter to one of the women who has accused him of sexually abusing her as a child saying he regretted “all the hurt, pain and distress I have caused,” the jury in his trial has been told.
The letter’s recipient, known as Complainant A, told Newry Crown Court the letter “felt like an apology”.
“He was trying to apologise for perhaps the abuse that had occurred, but he didn’t want to say that formally in writing,” the witness said.
Earlier, a police interview with Complainant A – whose identity is protected by law – was played to the court, in which she alleged she was “sexually abused” by Donaldson from “quite a young age”.
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She claimed that as an adult she asked him to confirm what had happened to her, and “he couldn’t look at me but he looked at the ground and he nodded”.
Jeffrey Donaldson (63), with an address in Dromore, Co Down, is accused of 18 offences – one count of rape, four counts of gross indecency with or towards a child, and 13 counts of indecent assault on a female, on dates between 1985 and 2008. He denies the charges.
His wife, Eleanor Donaldson (60), of the same address, is charged with five counts of aiding and abetting in connection with the charges faced by her husband – charges she denies.
Eleanor Donaldson is not present in court as she has been ruled unfit to stand trial on the basis of medical evidence, and will instead face a trial of the facts – which replaces a criminal trial in such circumstances – which will run concurrently with her husband’s trial, which began this week.
On Thursday, a handwritten letter sent by Jeffrey Donaldson to the complainant in June 2020 was read to the court by prosecution barrister Rosemary Walsh.
In the letter he referred to himself as a “sinner”, and as someone with a “sinful nature” he had “failed to address for far too many years”, and said he wished he could find the words to say “how sorry I am”.
He said he took “full responsibility for it all” and was “seeking help from God” and would “pray for” the alleged victim.
“These deep wounds are caused by my sinful and selfish actions,” he wrote.
Earlier on Thursday, in the police interview played to the court, Complainant A said that from around the age of six or seven she had become “very sexually aware” but was “never able to understand why” and thought there was “something wrong with me”.
This happened “on a number of occasions”, she said.
From the age of 10 or 11 she began to have nightmares of the defendant “chasing me” and she was “not able to get away from him”.
She also had nightmares “about men doing horrible things to children”.
The complainant described one incident she remembered “vividly” in which she claimed she had been sitting on the defendant’s knee and he put his “hand up underneath my top”.
She was wearing a sports bra and he had his hand underneath and was “rubbing me”, and “this was the way it usually went”.
She claimed this touching began around the age of seven or eight and continued until she was about 12 or 13. “It became quite normal practice.”
As she got older there was “a lot of interest in me ... the way I was changing” and comments about her physical appearance, “a lot of the time about the size of my breasts”.
Another alleged incident occurred when he kissed her and “he put his tongue in my mouth and moved I around my mouth before I was able to push him off”.
She claimed the defendant “laughed it off” and it was treated as a “joke”, but she said “I remember feeling this isn’t right”.
The complainant described another incident which she said happened when she was 13 or 14. She woke in the middle of the night to find a “dark figure”, who she said she recognised was the defendant “over the top of me” and holding a light.
She said her nightie was up to her chest line and she was “lying with my legs kind of open” and “I knew he was looking at my private parts.
“I think he had a torch ... the light went off because I woke up” and she thought she had startled him, and he “panicked” and left the room.
It was only when she went to university she “figured out this was wrong ... the interest he had in me was not normal”, the complainant said.
Cross-examining Complainant A on Thursday afternoon, defence barrister Kieran Vaughan questioned her recollection of events and said her memory was “foggy”.
The complainant said she did not agree with this, and while she would “struggle” with times and dates, her memory of the alleged incidents was clear.
“The incidents themselves – I remember significant detail due to the nature of what happened.”
The defence barrister also suggested the alleged “tongue in mouth” and “rubbing of chest” incidents did not happen.
He said: “Either you made it up – fabricated the tongue in the mouth or rubbing of the chest – or you dreamt it, and over the years you have just come to believe that it’s true.”
The complainant said to suggest someone would dream such a thing for no reason was “completely ridiculous” and “insulting”.
The defence barrister said the alleged incident in which the complainant claimed she had woken to find her nightdress pulled up and the defendant holding a light and “looking at my private parts” did not happen as she described it.
The court also heard Complainant A was sexually abused by another man when she was a child.
The defence barrister suggested this incident could have explained her allegations of sexual feelings and nightmares, and she was asked why she had not told the police about that abuse.
She said this was because the alleged abuse by Donaldson was “of such great significance” to her and that perhaps she had considered the abuse by the other man “to be the lesser of two evils”.
“My priority was this case and dealing with this,” she said.
The trial continues.
