Donaldson told police sex abuse allegations were 'unbelievable'

In a police interview Sir Jeffrey Donaldson "absolutely categorically" denied the alleged circumstances around an incident in which he is accused of raping one of the two complainants in the trial against him.

Sir Jeffrey, 63, has pleaded not guilty to 18 sex abuse charges, including one count of rape, allegedly committed between 1985 and 2008.

He told police after his arrest in March 2024 that the allegations were "unbelievable".

A detective constable told Newry Crown Court that Sir Jeffrey was interviewed for a total of four-and-a-half hours. Three hours of the interview will be played in court.

Warning: This story contains explicit details that some readers may find distressing

The former DUP leader was arrested at his County Down home and questioned for several hours at Antrim Police Station, before being charged.

A prosecution barrister said that his interview had been edited to remove "repetition and irrelevant material", with the consent of all parties.

She said what was being played was an accurate reflection of Sir Jeffrey's case.

In the interview, a police officer put it to him that he was alleged to have begun to "rub [his] penis around the area of her clitoris" and "inserted [his] penis into the entrance of her vagina".

Sir Jeffrey replied: "That did not happen. The answer to that is absolutely no."

He was asked if anything of that nature had ever happened, in any circumstances – to which he replied: "Never. Not ever."

A separate alleged incident was put to Sir Jeffrey, in which he was said to have lifted up Complainant B's top and "started playing with her breasts".

He was asked in the interview if he had ever touched the complainant's breasts or had ever done anything remotely like that. Sir Jeffrey said: "No, no, no."

The trial previously heard an allegation by Complainant B that Lady Donaldson witnessed this particular incident but walked away without speaking.

He replied: "If my wife had felt there was something wrong going on, my wife would have said at the time and would have intervened at the time.

The police interview then addressed a meeting that Sir Jeffrey attended in the 1990s at the Christian Family Centre in Armoy in County Antrim, run by Davey and Linda Hoy.

Complainant B had spent time staying at the centre and the court previously heard that a meeting had been arranged with Sir Jeffrey after she told a Christian pastor that she had been sexually abused as a child.

Sir Jeffrey said during the interview that at no stage had anyone alleged any of the kind of incidents subsequently put to him by police.

"Nobody