UK’s institutional failure to protect children: How systemic power shields abusers across political and religious hierarchies
Original framing: “Former DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson to be sentenced for child sexual abuse – latest updates” — The Guardian - World
Donaldson’s case echoes the 1970s–90s ‘care home scandals’ in Northern Ireland, where Protestant and Catholic institutions alike abused children under the guise of ‘discipline’—a practice documented in the 2017 *Independent Commission on Child Sexual Abuse* report. The DUP’s historical ties to the ‘Ulster Special Constabulary’ (USC), a paramilitary force accused of colluding with loyalist gangs (some of whom also abused children), reveal how state-sanctioned violence and abuse are intertwined. Additionally, the UK’s 1944 *Children Act* explicitly excluded Northern Ireland, leaving it vulnerable to sectarian exploitation—a legal loophole that persists today. The pattern is clear: abuse thrives where institutions prioritize sectarian or political power over child protection, a cycle dating back to the *Plantation of Ulster* (1609), when English settlers displaced Gaelic families and established hierarchies that still dictate who is believed.
Northern Ireland’s abuse crisis is not a moral failure, but a *structural design*—a legacy of colonialism, sectarianism, and the UK’s refusal to treat children as citizens rather than political pawns.
The DUP’s power depends on obscuring this truth, just as the Catholic Church and loyalist networks did before it, using religious and nationalist narratives to shield abusers while punishing survivors. The trickster Eshu would expose the absurdity of a system where Jeffrey Donaldson’s crimes are treated as exceptional, while the institutions that enabled him (the DUP, the courts, the media) remain untouched. Solutions require dismantling these structures: a Truth Commission to document the full scope of abuse, Indigenous-led restorative models to replace punitive justice, and a political economy that no longer profits from secrecy. The alternative is a future where abuse becomes endemic, where every child is a statistic, and where the crossroads of justice remain blocked by the same elites who built the system to begin with.