Jilly Beattie makes some profound points about abuse porn.
When Dialogue Ireland was trying to bring the cult-like activities of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland to the attention of the public, the BBC and the Belfast Telegraph were bringing horrendous examples of abuse to the publicâs attention, but in a manner that had no coherent worldview.
Some wished to go public, but after the Presbyterian church moderator, Trevor Gribben, resigned, there was a massive shift. Gribben was able to divert the attention of the cult at the heart of the Presbyterian church, as the PSNIâfollowing obvious child protection normsâpoint-blank refused to see that they had been outmanoeuvred by Gribben.
As he left, he even acknowledged that his best friend Conway was implicated in the safeguarding fiasco, but our hero walked into the sunny sunset of resignation. Veteran religion reporter Alf McCreary saw through this immediately and asked why Gribben had not stayed to face the music.
I phoned the PSNI to offer cult expertise, and it was clear back in November when they started a criminal probe of the PCI that what I was offering was irrelevant.
This was the same with the media, and the fundamental disciplinary CODE of the Presbyterian Church was totally unfit for purpose. So after the special Assembly run by the very people at the heart of the Gribben group who had contributed to the death of Barry Reid by how they destroyed ghim, and in many cases involving kangaroo church courts without legal representation and also criminal NDAs were by February of this year forgotten.
The Gribben loyalists were back in charge of the PCI, NDAs were reaffirmed, and the victims I was helping saw no future and left the field of play.
Gribben’s name was no longer mentioned, and the sign of this happening was the presence of John Faris, the retired minister of Trinity Church in Cork, in the February Special Assembly, standing up and saying those who were running an email campaign which was anonymous to protect those affected by the abuse in the PCI knew there were ways to address their concerns by the administration of the PCI? In other words: GET LOST.
The remark showed that no one would be able to have their voices heard.
UNFOUNDED CLAIMS
Jilly Beattie: Jeffrey Donaldsonâs victims are being erased by conspiracy chatter
PSNI Public Protection Branch hailed over child sex abuse case
07/07/2026
In early March 2023, a woman walked into a church building in Belfast and spoke to two people trained to listen.
She was not there to offer information. She was there to gather it.
She asked what the picture would look like if she made a formal complaint of non-recent sex abuse to the police.
She did not name an abuser. She did not hint at his identity, only to say that he was well known.
What her words immediately triggered was a set of obligations that fell on the PSNI officer and the safeguarding officer in that quiet room: confidentiality, trust and the space for a potential victim to make her own decision, at her own pace.
In time the same responsibility would fall on each and every one of us, the public. To uphold the dignity and protect their legal case.
It took two more years to bring her abuser, Jeffrey Donaldson, to justice.
Eighteen charges. A unanimous jury. Two complainants who told the truth under oath and were believed. After years of silence, finally, not only had they been heard, but they had been listened to.
In the two weeks since the former MP was led to a prison van, the noise has drowned the women out again.
Christian couple who counselled Jeffrey Donaldsonâs victim went to same church as killer dentist Colin Howell
Paedo Jeffrey Donaldson had police protection removed just weeks before sex crimes arrest
The complainants have been named on social media.
Each has been cold-called by a reporter offering to tell their story of bravery, to help other women. The women were distressed enough to phone police.
All of this happened inside a system built, deliberately, over years, to give these women control over their own story.
And now almost every article and broadcast about Donaldson ends the same way.
Paragraphs on his hypocrisy, the double life, the blackmail theories, the surveillance theories, the government-knew theories.
Then the must-have line: we must not forget the victims at the centre of this case.
That line is not offered in compassion by all. It is a safety latch, a type of alibi. Say it once at and the noise gets to carry on with a clean conscience.
But here is the truth that the alibi is covering for: it is the current noise itself that is erasing these two women. Not silence. Noise.
We know what the alternative looks like, because weâve watched it built, piece by piece, over two years – special measures, video links, needs assessments, an interview process designed around not re-traumatising a witness who already carries more than most people carry in a lifetime.
Every part of that architecture exists so a complainant keeps control of her own story. That is what the system is for.
Noise hauls it back. Every theory published without evidence, the endless âsources say,â the armchair reconstructions of what police must have known and when, drags these two women back into a story they already told, under oath, to a jury who believed them unanimously.
They did not ask to be the backdrop to weeks of speculation. They asked for it to be over.
Chief Constable Jon Boutcher said as much, plainly, to the Policing Board this week. The victims, he said, are finding the media frenzy and wild speculation incredibly difficult to handle.
Then the line that should have been the headline everywhere: âI am aware that journalists have tried to reach out to the victims. That must stop.â
Boutcher reminded everyone of something else: publicly identifying a victim of a sexual offence is a criminal offence.
That has not stopped speculation from circling close enough to make identification a real risk, dressed up as public interest.
In March 2023, more than a year before Donaldsonâs arrest, there was a meeting. It was informal. And exploratory. Nobody left that room with a complaint to act on.
Jacqui Montgomery Devlin, the Presbyterian Churchâs then safeguarding officer, has confirmed she was there.
So was a police inspector, who would go on to lead the case.
So was Complainant A and her husband, who would become Witness 1 in the trial. We know this not because the church worker was called to court as a witness, but because she spoke in a TV documentary.
Jacqui Montgomery Devlin claims they both knew that the man at the centre of the case was Jeffrey Donaldson, and her claim has triggered a furore that a police officer failed to act appropriately with the information.
That remains to be seen. The PSNI is one of the most heavily scrutinised, independently overseen police services anywhere in the world – a legacy of the Troubles and the peace process, not a courtesy extended for this case.
And while the media is folding details and nuances into a conspiracy about police failure, eyes have turned away from the real issue: a predator who preyed on children.
It is time to focus.
An unnamed suspicion, formed in an informal meeting where the alleged abuser was not identified, is not a workable complaint. It is not evidence.
Acting on it, without a name and without her consent, would have taken the decision to come forward away from Complainant A entirely, and handed it to police guessing at a story that she had not yet chosen to tell. This is not what protecting a victim looks like. It is the opposite of it.
The record, once she was ready, runs like this. On March 7 2024, Complainant A made her initial disclosure.
Her ABE interview followed on March 8. Complainant Bâs ABE interview followed on March 11. Donaldson was arrested on March 28 – three weeks after that first disclosure.
Three weeks, from disclosure to arrest, against a sitting MP, a knight of the realm, a party leader with every institutional advantage a man can have.
That is not a police service sitting on something. Doug Beattie has asked the Police Ombudsman to examine what intelligence existed before that point, and whether it should have gone further.
That is the right question, asked in the right place. It is not the same question being asked on social media, and everyone involved deserves better.
The Donaldson case did not happen by instinct, chance or goodwill. Every stage of this case was governed by a framework built specifically for complainants like these two women, and every part of it exists in law or statutory guidance – not as a courtesy extended when convenient.
Under the Northern Ireland Victim Charter, each complainant in the Donaldson case was entitled to:
* A needs assessment at the outset, carried out by police, to identify what support and protection she requires
* A single point of contact through the Victim and Witness Care Unit, so she is not left explaining herself separately to police, prosecutors and court staff at every stage
* To be kept informed of the progress of her case, not left to find out through the media or by chance
* Referral to independent support organisations such as Victim Support NI, on request
* To be treated courteously, sensitively and without discrimination throughout
Under the Achieving Best Evidence guidance, their interview would become the foundation of their evidence and had to follow strict rules:
* Interviewers are required to build rapport before asking about the substance of an allegation, sometimes across more than one meeting
* A reluctant or distressed witness cannot be pressed for detail before she is ready to give it
* The interview is video-recorded and can stand as her evidence-in-chief, so she does not have to repeat her account live in the witness box
* Leading questions and premature probing are treated as a failure of the interview, not a mark of thoroughness
* The pace is set by the witness, not by the investigationâs timetable
And under the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order 1999, as complainants in a sexual offence case they were each automatically eligible for special measures, which can include:
* Screens in court, so she never has to see the defendant in the dock while giving evidence
* Evidence given by live video link, from outside the courtroom entirely
* Evidence given in private, with the public gallery cleared
* The removal of wigs and gowns, to make the courtroom less intimidating
* Their video-recorded ABE interview admitted as evidence in chief, sparing them from telling the full account again in open court
None of it is generous. It is the law. It is what a properly run investigation into allegations of this kind is required to do, whether the accused is an ordinary man from Dromore or the one-time leader of the DUP.
The rules did not bend for who Donaldson was. They did not need to. They held.
The officers who carried it out were the PSNIâs Public Protection Branch – the unit whose job is exactly this: taking a disclosure like the one made on March 7 2024, and turning it, carefully and within three weeks, into an arrest that held all the way to a unanimous verdict on 18 charges.
They do not get named in the noise. They do not get thanked in it either. They should.
While the theories play out, something simpler and harder to sit with has gone almost unremarked. There is nothing as cunning as a paedophile who has everything to lose.
Donaldson did not need a government conspiracy to hide behind.
He had decades of one built in already: the fish pin on his lapel, the evangelical certainty, the long marriage, the seat held for 27 years, and the assumption – the same assumption that protects men like him everywhere – that a person cannot appear respectable and still be capable of this.
He built the cover himself, out of ordinary things. A pin. A pew. A reputation for decency and drive.
This is a harder story to tell than blackmail. It has no villain in Whitehall. What it does have, though, is a man who understood, better than almost anyone watching him, exactly how much he had to lose – and he used every bit of it, for decades, to make sure no one looked too closely, until two women decided they were done being quiet.
Meanwhile, child safeguarding expert Jim Gamble and his team are considering the request to carry out a review into who knew what and when inside the DUP around Donaldson.
A KC could do the job, but what Gamble offers is plain speaking independence, experience and compassion, having led the National Criminal Intelligence Serviceâs fight against child abuse.
He presided over Operation Ore and many other high-profile cases, and is currently reviewing concerns around safeguarding practices in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.
A review will take months, and while it unfolds, the noise around Donaldson will move on until his sentencing in the autumn.
The two women who told the truth in Courtroom 1 will not get to move on in the same way. They deserve to know that each of us remembers our responsibilities not only to them but to the law and to decency.
