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Northern Ireland’s biggest pro-UK party has little to cheer as celebrations kick off this weekend for the most hallowed date in the unionist calendar.
Allegations of sexual harassment and sleaze by former Democratic Unionist Party leader Jeffrey Donaldson have snowballed since his conviction last month for child rape.
They now threaten to engulf a party that appeared to turn a blind eye to reports of predatory behaviour and drunken antics by him over decades.
Saturday marks the start of unionists’ annual ‘Marching Season’ commemorations of Protestant King William III’s 1690 victory over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne.
But this year is an “inflection moment”, says Aaron Edwards, a historian and expert on unionism. “We probably will see the decline of the DUP as a political and electoral force.”
Donaldson’s conviction on 18 counts of sexual abuse of two women, beginning when they were in primary school and including one count of rape, has horrified Northern Ireland.
The party was stunned by the revelations and by all accounts, no one in it knew about what prosecuting barrister Rosemary Walsh called the 63-year-old evangelical Christian’s “sexual interest in prepubescent girls”.
But in the weeks since his conviction on June 22, and with less than a year to go until the next elections to Northern Ireland’s Stormont Assembly, fresh scandals have rocked the DUP’s attempts to distance itself from Donaldson, who has asked to be stripped of the knighthood he was awarded for his services to politics.
The most serious to date involves a woman who alleges Donaldson assaulted her in the DUP’s offices at Westminster in 2016, putting his hand up her skirt and attempting to kiss her on the mouth and ply her with vodka.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland said it was looking into an allegation. The Metropolitan Police in London is expected to investigate to see if there are criminal charges to answer.
Other reports about the behaviour of the married father-of-two have led to charges of hypocrisy against the leader of a party which preaches moral rectitude.
They include claims of affairs with women and men; of Donaldson visiting a gay sauna in London at a time he was describing homosexuality as sinful; and of him becoming uncontrollably drunk on numerous foreign trips.
Former DUP MP Ian Paisley Jr, eponymous son of the DUP founder, told the BBC that Donaldson had “projectile vomited” over the mayor of Beijing.
He is also alleged to have tried to kiss a female Northern Irish legislator in New York. Amid a scandal over MP expenses in 2009, Donaldson repaid £660 in hotel room service and movie rentals but denied they were porn, saying he watched The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Star Wars.
Donaldson’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
How much the DUP knew about aspects of his alleged conduct is a growing problem for the party.
Edwin Poots, Stormont speaker, has admitted knowing that Donaldson had been texting a young woman. “There’s quite a number of people within the DUP who knew about this,” he told ITV. He has resisted calls to resign.
In another alleged incident, one woman told a friend in a series of text messages in 2020 seen by the Belfast Telegraph that Donaldson was “a creep” and a “weirrrdoo”. She alleged Emma Little-Pengelly, the deputy first minister, had told her that Donaldson was “a danger” to her.
Little-Pengelly initially replied to the Belfast Telegraph’s report through solicitors WP Tweed, “categorically” denying any such warning. In a post on X, she later said Donaldson’s behaviour “has disgusted, shocked and revolted me . . . I had absolutely no reason to believe he was [dangerous] in 2020 nor did I have that view of him at that time or any time until his offending came to light”.
But questions remain. “The DUP has a safeguarding policy. Why did no one feel for 20 or 30 years that they could go to the safeguarding officer and report this?” asked Tim Cairns, a former DUP special adviser.
Two weeks after announcing it would launch an independent inquiry, the DUP on Thursday appointed a former police officer and safeguarding expert, Jim Gamble, to lead it. The investigation is expected to take three months.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill, of the nationalist Sinn Féin party, has accused the DUP of “clearly” covering up Donaldson’s behaviour “for decades”.
“There’s no unionist comes out of this with any credit because so many of them seem to be aware of what he was up to,” said Alex Kane, a commentator and former spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party, which Donaldson belonged to before defecting to the DUP.
The fallout threatens the DUP’s credibility ahead of the Stormont elections due next May, in which analysts say disgruntled supporters could switch to the hardline Traditional Unionist Vote or the UUP.
Kane said it could be the “nastiest battle for 50 years” within unionism.
“There’s a chunk of middle-class voters who’ve been holding their nose and voting DUP,” said one former senior DUP official. “Are they still going to hold their nose?”
