The complainant told Newry Crown Court of hearing the former DUP leader’s ‘heavy breathing’ during the alleged sexual assault.
A woman who claims she was raped as a child by Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has told a jury that the alleged incident will stay with her forever.
The complainant told a court of hearing the former DUP leader’s “heavy breathing” during the alleged sexual assault.
A police interview with the second alleged victim in Donaldson’s sexual offences trial was played at Newry Crown Court, before she was cross-examined.
The ex-MP, 63, has pleaded not guilty to 18 alleged offences.
The charges span a time period between 1985 and 2008 involving two alleged victims.
Eleanor Donaldson, from Dublinhill Road, Dromore, Co Down, denies several charges of aiding and abetting her husband’s alleged offending.
She is facing a trial of the facts.
Complainant B, one of the two alleged victims, was not in the courtroom, but appeared via a video link.
Her ABE (achieving best evidence) interview with police was played to the jury of seven men and five women on Tuesday morning.
Jeffrey Donaldson sat in the dock at the rear of the courtroom, while the interview, which was recorded in March 2024, was played.
Occasionally he shook his head during the evidence.
In the interview, the complainant said that growing up she was “sexually abused by an adult”.
She said she particularly remembered two incidents.
The woman frequently became emotional during the interview.
In the first, she claimed, Donaldson had put his hands down her underwear, pulled her legs apart and then sexually assaulted her.
She said the second incident occurred when she was slightly older when, she said, Donaldson “lifted up my top” and touched her breasts.
Asked by a police officer if there were other incidents, she said she remembered “his hands down my pants a lot”.
She said: “I remember I couldn’t tell anybody, I remember telling my imaginary friend.”
Asked by police for the name of her alleged abuser, she said “Jeffrey Donaldson MP”.
Asked about the first incident, she said it occurred when she was of primary school age.
She said: “I remember being really still and all I could hear was his breath.”
The complainant said she remembered Donaldson putting his hands down her pants and thinking “please, let this be it”.
The complainant said Donaldson put his feet between her feet and pulled her legs apart.
She said: “I kept thinking ‘it is OK, it will be over soon’ … I remember hearing his breathing.”
The complainant then said she felt “something different”.
She said: “First of all, I didn’t know what it was because I could still feel his hands.”
She then said he sexually assaulted her.
The complainant said: “I don’t know if it continued or if that was it.”
She added: “I just kept my eyes closed.”
She said: “I just remember hearing his heavy breathing.”
Complainant B said the second incident occurred when she was of secondary school age.
She said: “He lifted up my top and started playing with my breasts.”
She said Donaldson was standing “right in front” of her.
The complainant said that Eleanor Donaldson had witnessed part of the alleged incident and “walked away”.
Complainant B later told the jury that Donaldson had apologised to her at a meeting arranged at a Christian centre in Co Antrim years later.
“He apologised for what he had done to me in the past,” she said.
The witness was then cross-examined by Kieran Vaughan KC, barrister for Jeffrey Donaldson.
He referred to her claim that she had told her imaginary friend about the abuse while playing with a Christmas present she had received as a young child.
The barrister said: “It is a detail you have conjured up to make your account more plausible.”
She responded: “I disagree with you on that.”
The barrister pointed to an inconsistency in the age she told a counsellor the abuse had happened and what she later told police.
He said: “I am suggesting none of this happened.”
Complainant B said: “It is quite naive for you to say that.
“Everything I am saying is the truth … no matter how many questions people ask me it will never change that.”
He said: “I suggest you are in the position now that you just have to stick with the story you gave.”
She said: “Nothing will change what that man did to me.”
The barrister put it to her that she said she remembered two incidents of abuse “vividly”, but was “less certain” about the details of other events.
She said: “I know that they happened, I just don’t want to remember details.”
Turning to the alleged rape, he said her recollection of what had happened was “very poor”.
Complainant B responded: “My recollection is really vivid because I live with that every day.”
The barrister pointed out that she could not remember what age she was at the time of the alleged incident.
She said: “The actions that night I will never forget, what happened that night will live with me forever.”
She continued: “What did I do, what did I wear, what did I say to make that OK?”
Mr Vaughan suggested the incident “did not happen” and asked her why she did not tell anyone about it at the time.
She said: “It was my biggest mistake not telling anybody back then … I regret that every day.
“I didn’t know the words, I knew it was wrong.”
Turning to the second incident, the barrister said the defence case was that Donaldson had not touched the complainant inappropriately.
Again, he asked her why she did not tell anybody.
She said: “I was this kid who had stuff done to her that shouldn’t have been done by an adult.
“I wish I could go back in time and shout and scream and do something. I have to live with that.
“I was a kid, I didn’t know what to do, so therefore that kid did nothing.”
The trial resumes on Wednesday.
Jeffrey Donaldson, a former long-standing MP for Lagan Valley, was arrested and charged at the end of March 2024.
He resigned as DUP leader and was suspended from the party after the allegations emerged.
Weeks before his arrest, he had led the DUP back into devolved government at Stormont after a two-year boycott of the powersharing institutions.
