DUP leader is charged with sex offences
Donaldson is suspended & quits top job immediately
SIR Jeffrey Donaldson yesterday quit as Democratic Unionist Party leader after being charged with historical sex offences.
The 61-year-old is due to appear in court on April 24.
A 57-year-old woman has been charged with aiding and abetting additional offences in relation to the same police investigation.
Sir Jeffrey has said he will be strenuously contesting the charges.
He has been suspended by his party and stepped down immediately. DUP MP Gavin Robinson has been appointed interim leader.
Overnight, Sir Jeffrey’s website and social media accounts were deleted. The shock announcement comes just weeks after he made the decision to bring the party back to power-sharing in Northern Ireland.
The DUP said: “Party officers have suspended Mr Donaldson from membership, pending the outcome of a judicial process.”
Sir Jeffrey led the DUP during its two-year boycott of Northern Irish political institutions in protest at post-Brexit trading arrangements.
The party gave the green light for the recall of the Stormont Assembly in February on the back of a deal addressing its concerns.
Sir Jeffrey, who married Eleanor Cousins in 1987, has worked in politics for more than 40 years. At 18, he became a political activist after Ulster Defence Regiment service.
He ran the office of Tory MP Enoch Powell then worked for Ulster Unionist Party leader James Molyneaux. Aged 22 he became the youngest to be elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly, for the UUP.
His relationship with then-UUP leader David Trimble deteriorated when he led a walkout of the 1998 talks for the Good Friday Agreement.
Donaldson had opposed the early release of republican and loyalist prisoners. He joined the DUP in 2004, becoming leader in 2021.