The playbook is as old as time — abusers invoke holiness as 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.

- Melanie Reid

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 religion-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, 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.