Ben Lowry: We witnessed sombre and shocking scenes at the Jeffrey Donaldson court hearing

I was witness to both, as one of 13 members of the media in the narrow Court Three upstairs. Click here for an article I wrote that described the atmosphere in that wood panelled chamber.

I was struck by the almost poignant way the married couple demonstrated their respect for the proceedings. I imagine that Lady Donaldson, who tilted her head and briefly smiled at points and even spoke a few words to the custody officer beside her, was – understandably – trying to convey a sense of confidence, ease and dignity amid an appearance that even the most accomplished public performer would find gruelling.

Sir Jeffrey and Lady Donaldson shuffled into the back of the court at the same time at 1030am but did not look at, or speak to, each other and were separated by a uniformed custody officer. They had been not only forbidden from speaking to each other over the preceding 27 days, since their 6am arrest at home and separate questioning in Antrim PSNI station, they had not even been allowed to communicate by phone – she bailed to an address in Northern Ireland, he to one in London.

The bar on them having contact was lifted at Wednesday’s brief hearing, when Jeffrey and Eleanor Donaldson both separately spoke to confirm their age and that they understood the charges against them, but they nonetheless left separately, apparently to separate addresses. On Wednesday there was a sense of the loneliness of their court experience: they arrived independent of each other, both having to navigate a media scrum, and they left only accompanied by their lawyers to walk through the same gauntlet.

I write none of this to suggest sympathy for any party on either side of these criminal charges relating to historic sex abuse allegations, the details of which were not divulged on Wednesday, but rather to convey the sense of watching an unfolding human tragedy. All sex abuse cases are tragic for the victims if the allegations did happen and for the accused if they did not.

The court appearance of the Donaldsons on Wednesday, in a case titled ‘Donaldson and Donaldson’, was also a vivid illustration of the most dramatic fall from political high office I have seen in 40 years of reading or working on newspapers. Six weeks ago Sir Jeffrey was being celebrated in the White House, the toast of Downing Street, and hailed across Northern Ireland– as well as being a politician with overwhelming support in his Lagan Valley seat. For all the focus on Alliance’s rise in that constituency, he effortlessly topped the Stormont poll there in 2022.

The actual court appearance was orderly and professional. The Donaldsons stared respectfully ahead towards Judge Eamonn King at the far end of the court, while a packed public gallery and 13 of the most experienced journalists in Northern Ireland watched the couple in the dock, and scores more reporters observed them by video link.

While the court was subdued, the scenes when Sir Jeffrey left were not. He departed with his solicitor John McBurney about an hour after the hearing. Some of us journalists who were still in the court building followed the pair at a distance. Sir Jeffrey emerged to shouting – of questions from the press, as expected, but also of personal abuse from waiting members of the public who surged forward.

At first the throng was obscuring my view of Sir Jeffrey and Mr McBurney, but the car collecting them was delayed by the spilling of crowd and police on to the street. One of the most established politicians in the UK had to stand there amid the verbal onslaught and, in some cases, such anger that the duo began to head back to the court. For a while I wondered if the police officers would retain control of the situation, but they did and, shouting orders to one another and also to the public to make room for the car, which by then had arrived, they formed a human chain, through which the former DUP leader walked to the vehicle

There is online footage of me approaching a man who perhaps had been part of the shouting, to ask if an organised group had led it. I wondered if it was republicans, or loyalists, or vigilante groups that follow sex cases, or maybe just random members of the public.

By merely asking those questions, some people on social media suggested I was blindly defending Sir Jeffrey, regardless of the facts. That is wrong. I know little about the details of this case, which are under wraps. Many rumours surrounding this case contradict each other and some have already been shown to be nonsense. I have no reason to believe that people present outside court on Wednesday knew any more than the rest of us.

The principle that someone is innocent until proven otherwise seems at times to have been lost in the atmosphere around this case. I have been surprised that some prominent DUP members, when grilled about the sequence around Sir Jeffrey standing down as leader and being suspended as a party member on Good Friday, have emphasised the immediate separation but did not even take a few seconds to remind the public of the presumption of innocence.

Those mob scenes outside were possible because of a determination to show that everyone is treated equally before the law. Fair enough – it is a key legal principle (even if at times in Northern Ireland it has not seemed to pan out in practice).

But not everyone is subject to the same risks. The authorities probably feared appearing to give Sir Jeffrey special treatment if he had been allowed, for safety reasons, to get into his vehicle on the secure court side of the wall around Newry Magistrate’s building.

This was a man who until recently had police protection yet on Wednesday had to stand amid chaos and verbal abuse on the street awaiting a civilian vehicle.

I make no comment on the unknown details of the criminal case in question when I say that it was a sobering and at points grisly morning to behold.