DUP members knew of Jeffrey Donaldson allegations but did not share them, party says

Former and current members of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) knew of allegations about the former leader Jeffrey Donaldson but did not share them, the party has said.

Information about Donaldson was not reported through “appropriate channels” and left the party unable to formally respond, the DUP leader, Gavin Robinson, said on Monday.

The admission came as new claims about Donaldson’s conduct engulfed the party in crisis a week after he was convicted of sexual abuse against children in a case that shocked Northern Ireland.

It is alleged that the former Lagan Valley MP sexually pestered women, visited a gay sauna while denouncing homosexuality and got drunk on foreign trips – and vomited over the mayor of Beijing – while professing to be a teetotaller.

The claims came after a jury at Newry crown court on 22 June unanimously found the 63-year-old guilty of 18 sexual offences, including one count of rape, against two women when they were children. He is to be sentenced in September. The Belfast Telegraph reported that he is expected to appeal.

The DUP joined other parties in welcoming the verdict and stressed that it had suspended Donaldson when he was first charged in 2024. However its hopes of containing the political damage have dissolved amid a clamour over what the party knew – and when – about other misconduct by Donaldson.

The DUP announced an independent review into its handling of information about Donaldson, but other parties at Stormont questioned the investigation’s credibility and transparency. “It is not tenable for the DUP to be hiring those who will be investigating extremely grave allegations against their former party leader,” said Sorcha Eastwood, an Alliance MP who won Donaldson’s seat after he stepped down in 2024.

Some commentators called it the biggest crisis in the DUP’s history. Wallace Thompson, a founding member, said the party’s traditional emphasis on moral rectitude amplified the fallout. “It is almost like a nuclear explosion in political terms,” he told the BBC. The party’s late founder, Ian Paisley, would be turning in his grave, said Thompson.

BBC Spotlight reported that that five years ago, two senior DUP members were made aware of allegations against Donaldson – unrelated to the recent criminal case – made by a young woman who said she had been “exploited” by him.

The former North Antrim MP Ian Paisley Jr told the programme that the woman did not want to make a formal complaint but that he had relayed her claim to Edwin Poots, who was then the DUP leader. Poots, who is now the speaker of Stormont, told the programme: “We observed at all times the wishes of the young woman.”

Paisley told Spotlight that Donaldson was often drunk on overseas trips, including an occasion in New York when he tried to kiss a female DUP assembly member. “On a trade mission, on the other side of the world [he was] getting so blindingly drunk that he actually projectile vomited over the mayor of Beijing,” said Paisley Jr.

Spotlight has reported that two senior police officers observed Donaldson entering a sauna in London that marketed itself as a meeting place for gay men in 2006 despite his denunciations of homosexuality as “sinful”.

Neither Donaldson nor his lawyers have responded to the claims.

Robinson said the DUP, which faces an assembly election next year, was not formally notified of the claims but that evidently some individual members had information they did not share.

The review would establish if members still held information that they had not yet shared, he said. “It is my job to set our standards and what we have heard over the last number of days falls well below the standards that I hold and my colleagues hold for our party. It is our job to make sure we are not turning a blind eye.”