In the hands of abusers, holiness is another tool of control

There was a point, in my twenties, when I had the opportunity to go and live on a farm in County Down. My then husband – one of the generation of Northern Irish who grew up during the Troubles, escaped to university on the mainland and never went back – had inherited the family home.

There, on a plate, was our dream of a lovely house and a rural lifestyle. Did we consider it? For about three seconds. The thought of exchanging a relaxed, liberal, unconstrained society on mainland UK for the God-bound, riven, repressive surroundings of 1980s Northern Ireland was a no-brainer.

This came back to me as I watched the fall of Jeffrey Donaldson, an evangelical Presbyterian, MP, former head of the Democratic Unionist party (DUP) and now a convicted sex offender. As the BBC’s documentary on the scandal puts it: politician, predator, paedophile.

From my perspective now, how does my “sliding doors” decision stand? It is extraordinary how behaviour such as Donaldson’s replicates in fundamentalist societies right around the world, through different religions and successive generations. The playbook is as old as time. Men espouse the rapture of faith as a repressive force to coerce their wives, protect dark secrets and furnish their careers.

For more than 40 years Donaldson was a repressor-in-chief, the embodiment of moral rectitude, a politician serving God and the people, fighting against sin, sodomy and Rome. What good cover religion provides! Behind the facade he abused two young girls for decades, had affairs, preyed on at least one young woman, watched hours of pay-for-view TV in hotels on MPs’ expenses and visited a gay sauna.

When his wife, Eleanor Donaldson, discovered some of this, he simply begged God for forgiveness and continued. She witnessed the child abuse but was presumably too scared and submissive to go to police. Years later, asked why she stayed in the marriage, she said to officers: “What would the neighbours think?”

And there, in a nutshell, you have it. Because in Northern Ireland, even in the 21st century, while God would surely pardon Jeffrey, the woman must bear the shame.

Pause for a beat to consider how ghastly it must be, trapped in marriage within fundamentalism. Under the Banner of Heaven, Jon Krakauer’s book exploring the extremes of the Mormon faith, laid bare the polygamy and institutionalised paedophilia that exists in plain sight in the modern United States. Just as the mainstream Mormon church tries to distance itself from its founder, Joseph Smith – who had at least 33, possibly 48 wives (the youngest 14) – it tries to deny the existence of its FLDS fundamentalist wing.

But they’re there. Living in isolated communities in remote southern Utah and Arizona, as many as 100,000 people follow a polygamous life. Here, Krakauer found men routinely exchanging teenage daughters as brides. These are societies in which murder, extreme violence against women and sex abuse is prevalent, directed, of course, by God.

This column, genuinely, is not intended to offend people of faith. It is to say that in the wrong hands, religion of every hue has one common thread: holiness is used by men to control and abuse. We have seen it in Catholicism and Anglicanism; we can view it at its extreme in the methods of the Taliban.

Repression filters down, pervading homes. Cleanliness really is next to godliness in Northern Ireland. I knew one mild-mannered churchgoer there who decreed that his wife must never use washing-up liquid or cleaning products. Hot water and scrubbing would suffice.

The province is a fascinating example of how religion drifts towards extremism in the face of a perceived threat. Fundamentalism emerges in response to a crisis, when spirituality feels persecuted by a different belief system. Violence follows when the fight becomes one of good versus evil.

When the polished surface of respectability cracks it can be spectacular. I am reminded of Irisgate, a DUP sex scandal that came to light in 2010. Iris Robinson, the glamorous wife of Northern Ireland’s then first minister, and herself an MP, went rogue. She took lovers – at least three, it is rumoured. For one, a 19-year-old man 40 years her junior, she wrongly obtained £50,000.

As was the case with Eleanor, Iris was found to be suffering from mental ill health. The Booker winner Anne Enright put it succinctly: “Being mad in Northern Ireland is different from being mad in any other place.”

The husband, Peter Robinson, a nice liberal chap who helped start the campaign Save Ulster from Sodomy, afterwards issued the creepiest public statement I’ve ever heard. “In a spirit of humility and repentance, Iris sought my forgiveness,” he said. “She took responsibility upon herself alone for her actions and I have forgiven her. More important, I know that she has sought and received God’s forgiveness.”

Amen to that handmaiden’s tale. On balance I’m glad I didn’t move to Ireland.

Photograph PA/Alamy