{"id":56291,"date":"2026-07-09T14:49:13","date_gmt":"2026-07-09T14:49:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/jeffrey-donaldson-child-safety-expert-to-lead-review-into-dup\/"},"modified":"2026-07-09T14:49:13","modified_gmt":"2026-07-09T14:49:13","slug":"jeffrey-donaldson-child-safety-expert-to-lead-review-into-dup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/jeffrey-donaldson-child-safety-expert-to-lead-review-into-dup\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeffrey Donaldson: Child safety expert to lead review into DUP"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Jim Gamble, who formally headed up the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, has been commissioned to lead an independent review for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) over Jeffrey Donaldson&#8217;s actions.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/ckg8kgdegp8o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">follows a crisis sparked<\/a> after the former DUP leader&#8217;s conviction for child sex offences last month.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Earlier this year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/ckg0xe8pd75o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Gamble was appointed to carry out an external review<\/a> of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland&#8217;s governance and safeguarding arrangements.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Donaldson <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c04yrvzkdqqo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">was convicted of 18 counts of sex abuse last month<\/a>, including one count of rape, committed against two women when they were children.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">A BBC Spotlight investigation has <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cpd393jx81yo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">since revealed that two senior DUP members were made aware of different allegations against Donaldson five years ago<\/a>, when a young woman said she had been &#8220;exploited&#8221; by him.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The DUP said Gamble, as part of the iNEQE Safeguarding Group would conduct an Independent Focused Safeguarding Review for the party into Donaldson&#8217;s time as a member of the party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a statement on Thursday, it said the review would establish what, if any, information was known within the party about his conduct, to examine its safeguarding and reporting arrangements, and to make recommendations to ensure good practice for all its members and staff.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The review will be carried out by a specialist multi-disciplinary team from the iNEQE Safeguarding Group, drawing on their safeguarding, child protection and policing expertise,&#8221; it added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The review will be led by Mr Jim Gamble. The review will be conducted entirely independent of the DUP.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c77y0zle5nmo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jim Gamble, who formally headed up the Child Exploitation and Online Protection (CEOP) Centre, has been commissioned to lead an independent review for the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) over Jeffrey Donaldson&#8217;s actions. It follows a crisis sparked after the former DUP leader&#8217;s conviction for child sex offences last month. Earlier this year, Gamble was appointed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56292,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2086,15175,5982,2219,775,2358,1553,2795],"class_list":["post-56291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-ireland","tag-child","tag-donaldson","tag-dup","tag-expert","tag-jeffrey","tag-lead","tag-review","tag-safety"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56293,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56291\/revisions\/56293"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}