The jury in the trial of the former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson for child sex offences has been sent home for the day.
The jury of seven men and five women had not reached a verdict after three hours and 10 minutes of deliberations on Thursday, and will return on Friday morning.
In his direction to the jury on Thursday morning, Judge Paul Ramsey had said in regard to several of the incidents in dispute – including the alleged rape of one of the complainants when she was a primary schoolchild – there was a “head-on collision” between the positions of the Donaldsons and the complainants.
It was a matter for the jury, he said, to decide whether they believed the evidence given by the complainants who claimed they were abused by Jeffrey Donaldson, or Donaldson’s evidence that it “did not happen”.
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He said if the men and women of the jury believed the complainants, and found their evidence “reliable”, then they must convict, and find Donaldson guilty, but if they were “not sure or not satisfied”, then they must find him not guilty.
Donaldson, wearing a dark grey suit and a pink tie, sat in the dock at the back of the court with his arms folded while the judge delivered his remarks.
The former DUP leader’s trial began at Newry Crown Court four weeks ago.
Donaldson (63), with an address in Dromore, Co Down, faces 18 charges – 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.
The charges relate to two women who claim Jeffrey Donaldson abused them when they were children from the ages of about seven or eight to 12 or 13.
His wife Eleanor (60), of the same address, was charged with four counts of aiding and abetting and one count of cruelty to children.
She did not face a criminal trial as she was ruled medically unfit, and the jury must instead decide whether she committed the acts alleged on the basis of trial of the facts.
Jeffrey Donaldson was one of Northern Ireland’s most high-profile and longest-standing politicians at the time of his arrest in March 2024.
Two months before, he had negotiated the DUP back into Stormont after a two-year boycott over Brexit had led to the collapse of the North’s political institutions.
He was suspended from the party and stood down as party leader, and was replaced by the then deputy leader Gavin Robinson.
He did not stand in the UK general election that July and lost his seat as MP for Lagan Valley, which he had held since 1997.
