Northern Ireland’s deputy first minster says she was “completely floored” when she first heard of the arrest and charges of former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Jeffrey Donaldson over historical sex abuse.
In June, he was convicted of 18 counts of sex abuse, including one count of rape, which he committed against two women when they were children.
Emma Little-Pengelly said that people who worked alongside Donaldson over the past 20 years are “floored, shocked and utterly repulsed”.
On Friday, it emerged Donaldson is to appeal his conviction.
After the former DUP leader was found guilty, a BBC Spotlight investigation reported on the double life of Donaldson.
The programme heard from former senior police officers and politicians who spoke about behaviour they described as hypocritical and which put Donaldson in danger of being compromised by his political opponents.
Speaking to the BBC’s Red Lines podcast, Little-Pengelly said those reports should not take away from the scale of the crimes that he has been found guilty of.
“He’s been convicted of being a paedophile and a rapist, and yes, there’s all of these other allegations, but they absolutely pale into insignificance of that,” she said.
“The focus should always be on the fact that he’s been convicted of being a rapist and a paedophile, and that the victims of that have gone through a terrible ordeal to get justice.”
Little-Pengelly, who has also served as a special adviser, MP and MLA, first started working with Donaldson when she was in her mid-20s.
She said no one ever warned her to “watch out” for Donaldson or that he was a “predator”.
“I did not find him sleazy to me at all,” said Little-Pengelly. “Nothing within him gave me a sense that he was a sexual predator.”
The DUP has now set up an independent review into Donaldson’s actions.
Little-Pengelly said she hopes it will “absolutely clarify exactly who knew what”.
“I suspect [the review] will make clear that nobody had any inkling whatsoever that this person was who he has now come to light to be.”
Former DUP MP Ian Paisley previously told the BBC he saw Donaldson “blindingly drunk” during a St Patrick’s trip to Washington.
However, Little-Pengelly said she did not see anything that made her think Donaldson was a hard drinker.
“I can say hand in my heart, I didn’t see anything that made me think that there were any issues in terms of problematic behaviour in regards to drinking or in terms of sexually inappropriate behaviour,” she added.
“If any politician was running around acting in that way, I think it would have been the talk of St Patrick’s in [Washington] DC amongst the many, many, people from Northern Ireland that go out there.”
Little-Pengelly said she finds it “astounding that people haven’t been talking about that for the last 20 years”.
She said Donaldson would have had a glass of wine at events but she never saw him drinking too much.
“On some of this other stuff, look, I don’t know whether some of these allegations are true or they’re not true.
“All I can say is that I never saw problematic drinking from Jeffrey Donaldson.
“If anything, Jeffrey Donaldson was somebody who seemed to work all of the time.”
The full BBC Red Lines interview with Emma Little-Pengelly is available now on BBC Sounds.
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