Jeffrey Donaldson survivor: 'The sexual abuse left me not wanting to be alive most days'
One of the survivors of sexual abuse by former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson said that it left her "not wanting to be alive most days".
The abuse of Complainant B began when she was seven or eight and has affected everything in her life.
"It's really hard because you kind of want not be alive most days but you have to keep going because they've affected my life so much already that they're not going to have the final say," she said.
Victims now live in a very different world to 10, 20 or 30 years ago, she said, addressing her voice to other abusers.
"There's enough of us out there now speaking up that it's becoming loud, it's becoming a real voice and your day will come and you have to just accept that - you have to accept what you did was wrong."
Everyone has to face the consequences for bad decisions and abusers are no different, she said.
"You've got to accept that what you did was wrong and just own what you did - just own what you did."
The complainants are known to the world as A and B but they are real people with real lives.
"Those letters don't mean that we don't hurt any less than anybody else," she said.
Both victims would constantly hear people in everyday life speculate about their lives and details of the abuse, which she said was "really, really difficult".
Her guiding light was simply to tell the truth throughout - and she urged other victims to follow the same path.
"When it's the truth about your life, the one thing that I will say for anybody thinking [about speaking out is] the truth will get you through and if you just tell what happened, that's what gets you through."
Complainant A said the abuse began when she was seven or eight and continued till she was 13 or 14.
"At the time I was frightened, confused and at that age you're very easily controlled and manipulated,” she said.
"I think that was a theme that's played out for most of my life."
As a child she told a trusted adult but felt she wasn't believed "and if I was believed I was made to feel that it wasn't worth taking action over".
As a result she internalised that "I wasn't worth protecting, that I wasn't worth caring about and again that's something that I have struggled with for a really long time".
She added: "To tell someone that you trust, something so deeply personal and private and to have them make light of it, it just breaks you and leaves you feeling very inadequate and very small.”
As an adult she has felt that her voice is not important and "that made up what happened to me, that I fabricated it; for so long I nearly questioned if I had imagined it or dreamt it".
She added: "I was told for so long that I wouldn't be believed because of who he was, but I became a mum and something changed within me.
"I looked at my little girl and I remember thinking how much I wanted to protect her and how I just felt this overwhelming sense that I had to keep her safe. And that then started a lot of questions in my mind of ‘why was I not kept safe? Why did no one feel like this about me?’”
Another "huge" factor for her was her faith.
“All of these secrets and lies need to be exposed and I felt very much that that was something I needed to do was to tell the truth and to finally shine a light into that dark corner."
Speaking out came gave her "a profound sense of relief also that somebody knew the truth and that it was no longer my responsibility".