By Deborah Nnamdi
A Nigerian national, Adeleke Adelani, has been sentenced to nine years in prison for forcing his former girlfriend to take abortion pills and unlawfully terminating her nine-week pregnancy in County Donegal, Ireland.
Adelani was handed an 11-year sentence by Judge John Aylmer at the Central Criminal Court, with the final two years suspended. The court heard that his actions on St Valentine’s Day in 2020 were “extremely premeditated.”
According to evidence presented in court, Adelani lured the woman to his home in Letterkenny under the pretext that they would raise the baby together. However, he had already researched online how to carry out a termination despite knowing that she wanted to keep the child.
The court was told that he forced her to ingest five abortion tablets obtained from a pharmacy in Dublin, threatening to “beat her nine-week-old foetus out of her” if she refused. Recordings played during the trial captured him saying: “I’m showing you what to do … take this … I’m dead serious … I’m forcing you. I don’t care, take it.” He further threatened, “It’s either you eat this or I beat that kid out of you tonight.”
Judge Aylmer described the offences as grave, noting the unlawful ending of the life of a foetus, assault causing harm, threats, and false imprisonment. He said it was “quite difficult to contemplate a more serious offence” under the statutory provisions.
Before mitigation, the court indicated the offences merited 11 years for unlawfully ending the life of a foetus under the Health (Regulation of Termination of Pregnancy) Act 2018 and five years for assault causing harm under the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act 1997, to run concurrently.
Taking into account Adelani’s guilty plea, expressions of remorse, and good conduct in custody, the sentence was reduced to nine years for the foetus charge and four-and-a-half years for assault. The new sentence will run consecutively to a separate five-and-a-half-year term he is already serving for another offence.
In a powerful victim impact statement, the woman — who requested that Adelani be publicly named — told the court: “Healing does not erase the loss; it only means I learned how to live with it.”
She added: “When he wrongfully imprisoned me and caused the termination of my nine-week pregnancy, he took far more than my freedom. He took my child. He took my sense of safety. He took a future that I had already begun to plan and love.
“My baby was real to me. I had hopes, dreams, and a bond with the life that was growing inside me, and all of it was violently stolen from me in a moment of cruelty that I will never forget.”
Garda PJ Folan told the court that officers responded to what appeared to be a domestic incident in Letterkenny shortly before 2:20pm on the day of the offence.
Speaking after the sentencing, Garda Inspector Paul McGee commended the “remarkable strength shown by the victim in seeking accountability” and urged anyone experiencing violence, coercion, or harassment to contact the authorities.
