A “callous” and “selfish” man who gave abortion drugs to a pregnant woman without her knowledge, causing her to lose her unborn baby, has been jailed for 12 years.
Stuart Warby, 40, crushed a tablet into orange juice the woman drank in 2022.
The defendant, from Dereham, Norfolk, then gave the victim several tablets of another abortion drug after using deception to engage in sexual activity with her while she was blindfolded.
The woman, who is entitled to lifelong anonymity by law as a victim of a sex crime, was 15 weeks pregnant when she miscarried.
Edmund Vickers KC, prosecuting, told Norwich Crown Court it was “quite clear” the woman “wanted to have the baby”.
In a victim impact statement read to the court by the prosecutor, the woman said she felt she “failed to protect her baby”.
“This pain will never leave me knowing that this baby could have been my only chance to be a mother in this life,” she said.
The woman said she was unable to conceive again and “went from infertility clinic to infertility clinic.” “Being a mother was a dream for me,” she told the court.
Vickers said Warby’s crime was “deliberate, well-planned and callous” and he had been helped to obtain the abortion drugs by his friend’s partner Nueza Cepeda.
He said Warby paid £470 to book an appointment for Cepeda at a gynecological center in London. The appointment took place in the summer of 2022. and a prescription was made for the two abortion drugs along with painkillers, the prosecutor said.
Sentencing Warby on Friday, the judge, Mr Justice Joel Bennathan, told him: “You are a selfish person and you decided to abort the baby without [the woman] knowing.”
The judge also issued a restraining order banning Warby from contacting the woman indefinitely and ordered him to pay her £10,000.
Kepeda, 39, from Dereham, was given a 22-month prison sentence suspended for two years after pleading guilty to supplying an instrument to induce a miscarriage.
Andrew Oliver, mitigating for Cepeda, said she had acted out of “misplaced loyalty to someone who was friends with her partner”.
He said Cepeda, a cleaner who had no previous convictions, was “devastated that she played a part in the harm and suffering that was caused” and “received no financial or other benefit for the part she played”.
The judge said he accepted she was only involved “due to pressure or harassment from Stuart Warby”.