Alison Morris

He shared it with his wife.

And then what he said was he slept on it.

He didn't want to respond straight away.

And he waited until the following morning when he said that he responded and said to Geoffrey Donaldson that he didn't think it would be appropriate for them to meet at that time.

Geoffrey Donaldson then responded saying he'd understood, but that he had wanted to repent in front of them.

And that was repent in front of

witnessing her husband but as he had already done before the Lord and again a lot of biblical references in this message and the minister did not respond to that message but he did retain that correspondence and then later he has handed those messages over to police so they're in the possession of the prosecution.

So it is my understanding that Jeffrey Donaldson is going to give evidence on his own behalf.

A defendant in a criminal case is not under any obligation to give evidence on their own behalf.

They don't have to.

But I have spoken, you know, during the sort of breaks with his legal team and have been told that, yeah, he is going to give evidence on his own behalf.

And that will be crucial because with allegations of an historic nature, it's not like something that happened a week ago or two weeks ago.

So you don't have, you know, forensic officers giving evidence.

You don't have any of that sort of, I suppose, the kind of forensic evidence that would be produced in a modern case.

Instead, you have basically

an account of an event given by the complainant and then you have an account of an event given by the defendant and so that's what we're going to hear.

I would expect maybe Monday or Tuesday that Geoffrey Donaldson will be in the witness stand and then he will answer questions and that will be when the defence starts to present their case.

I'm not sure who else the defence are going to call at this point in time.

I believe that the defence is only going to call Geoffrey Donaldson and that will be I suppose the conclusion then and then it will be for the jury to decide.

We were told originally that the case was expected to last three weeks, possibly go into a fourth week.