Whited Sepulchres: Jeffrey Donaldson, Sexual Offending and Moral Disguise

Now, obviously, the impetus for this episode is, I suppose, the conviction of Geoffrey Donaldson.

That's his weekend on the 26th of June.

2026 so basically Jeffrey Donaldson on Monday the 22nd of June 2026 was convicted of one kind of rape and 18 counts of sexual abuse now this was against two women and the offenses occurred when these two ladies were in fact children so firstly I think it has to be said that the two victims in this case had a had shown a tremendous amount of Fortitude um going forward uh with their cases even approaching uh the police and making the complaints uh because especially against such um a high profile figure who seemed to command so much respect adulation and power and including that with an awful lot of historical cases There is very seldomly any material evidence.

What you're sort of relying on is kind of a corroboration and evidence of first disclosure.

So for these two victims to go through the process, and it has to be said, they were put through this process because Donaldson refused to admit his guilt.

So therefore, obviously, a full court case had to go ahead.

And even though police And the Public Prosecution Service would have kind of put the two victims or advised the two victims that, you know, obviously they've been going up against a barrister.

And in cases like these, it can be quite brutal, I guess, because obviously it's a defence barrister and his job is to undermine the prosecution, undermine the prosecution's witnesses.

And obviously, you know, in that case, they'll use...

I guess every legal trick in the book, for want of a better phrase, to undermine those witnesses, because really all the barrister has to try and do is to cast doubt on the witness evidence.

It's not a case where they so much have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the witness is lying or misleading the court as such.

It's just a case where, as I say, all they have to do is undermine it.

And if they can pick and poke at parts of the witness statement, you know, the ABE, the video evidence, that is, you know, that's their job and that's what they'll do to create that kind of doubt or unsurety in the minds of the jury.

And another tactic as well is to try and get the witness to stray outside of the evidence they have given.

And in doing that, then that opens an opportunity again to undermine the witness because it's bringing a witness into territory that may be unfamiliar to the witness and the witness hasn't had time to kind of absorb that information.

especially in cases, as I say, you know, historical cases of sexual abuse, it can be very, well, extremely traumatic, retraumatising and brutal for the witness, because every aspect of that witness's background, sexual proclivity, preference, et cetera, will be picked apart and will be picked apart in the court obviously in view of uh in the presence of the jury and presence of obviously that the judge and the clerk so you know a lot of people a lot of strange faces so you know this can be quite uh disorientating uh for the witness so i think you know the aspect especially as i say you with historic historical sexual crime on the aspect of of the witnesses themselves you know um going forward and something like that it's like it's it's tremendous and it's very very easy i guess for some witnesses especially in a case where as i say you know you're coming up against somebody so high profile and your sort of expectations is they're going to have the you know the best legal team the best barristers um and they may even have public opinion behind them or some degree of public opinion behind them um know so for a witness to actually stand up in court and go ahead and go through all the x amount of days and getting examined cross-examined in the box and you know retaining some wherewithal and some integrity Well, I don't think it can be repeated enough just how brave these victims were and how much, I guess, of a leading light these victims were as well in the context of other victims of sexual abuse, even, you know, violent abuse, to be able to maybe have some kind of confidence now in the legal profession that they can come forward and they would be believed.

I mean, hey, you know, just so that I remember This was in the PSNI and I was on a course with some officers from rape crime and a couple of the interviewing officers, I think we were just having lunch, but they were kind of openly denigrating some female victims as it were some uh females who came forward um and made allegations of rape and they were kind of denigrating them and you know you know disbelieving them immediately and you kind of think my god you know these are officers in rape crime now obviously these two individuals uh they're no longer in rape crime and obviously it doesn't um i don't want to cast the steel on the whole of rape crime but again it was that kind of um i guess mentality that um came over from uh the royalist the constabulary of um misogyny uh the kind of uh boys culture you know that boys will be boys and uh etc uh but hopefully now uh in light of this case uh it will encourage more uh victims uh to come forward and hopefully there will be properly supported properly guided through um the whole legal process because it's very very contrived it's very very traumatic you know they're going to be uh the victims are going to be like 24 7 they're going to be worried about it they're going to be worried about appearing in court uh what's going to happen if they'll be believed um because a lot of this The abuse that happened to them, they may have suppressed it for years and it may just take something to break them, I guess, and it all sort of spills out.

And it can spell out in some kind of complete mental breakdown or even some kind of psychotic episode.

So for a victim or victims to come forward and make this or these kind of disclosures, it takes an awful lot of bravery.

And an awful lot of trust, as I say, in those systems, in those processes that will carry that victim or those victims through to some form of closure and hopefully some kind of justified closure for them.

Although, you know, that kind of abuse, obviously it never leaves somebody, but it may solve that sort of mental injury in some way.