{"id":56843,"date":"2026-07-17T15:03:03","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:03:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/former-dup-leader-jeffrey-donaldson-to-appeal-sex-offence-convictions\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T15:03:03","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:03:03","slug":"former-dup-leader-jeffrey-donaldson-to-appeal-sex-offence-convictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/former-dup-leader-jeffrey-donaldson-to-appeal-sex-offence-convictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson to appeal sex offence convictions"},"content":{"rendered":"


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The former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson is to appeal against his sex offence convictions, it has been confirmed.<\/b><\/p>\n

His legal team lodged the paperwork with the Court of Appeal in Belfast on Friday.<\/p>\n

The document sets out in detail the grounds on which he will attempt to have all 18 guilty verdicts set aside.<\/p>\n

Donaldson is in Maghaberry Prison waiting to be sentenced after he was convicted of 18 counts of sex abuse,<\/a> including one count of rape, committed against two women when they were children.<\/p>\n

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly. Please refresh the page for the fullest version.<\/i><\/p>\n

You can receive Breaking News on a smartphone or tablet via the <\/i>BBC News App<\/i><\/a>. You can also follow <\/i>@BBCBreaking on X<\/i>, external<\/span><\/a> to get the latest alerts.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson is to appeal against his sex offence convictions, it has been confirmed. His legal team lodged the paperwork with the Court of Appeal in Belfast on Friday. The document sets out in detail the grounds on which he will attempt to have all 18 guilty verdicts set aside. Donaldson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56844,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[3529,2770,15175,5982,775,2095,5197,1998],"class_list":["post-56843","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-n-ireland","tag-appeal","tag-convictions","tag-donaldson","tag-dup","tag-jeffrey","tag-leader","tag-offence","tag-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56843","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=56843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56845,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56843\/revisions\/56845"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}