A 28-year-old Nigerian man, Adeleke Adelani, has been sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment for causing the unlawful termination of a woman’s pregnancy after forcing her to take five “abortion” pills and then locking her in a room at a house in Letterkenny, Co Donegal.
Local media, Irish Times and RTE News, reported on Thursday that Adelani told his former girlfriend that he would beat her nine-week-old foetus out of her if she did not take the tablets on St Valentine’s Day in 2020.
According to the Irish Times, the court was told that Adelani had been a student at the Letterkenny Institute of Technology and that he had met the woman on Snapchat.
The victim, now 26, had initially agreed to an abortion during a previous pregnancy with Adelani in 2019. However, when she became pregnant again in January 2020, she decided to keep the child after visiting a friend in London and discussing her situation.
Upon learning that the woman had skipped a medical appointment to keep the baby, Adelani cancelled a planned holiday and lured her to a house in Ashlawn, Letterkenny, under the pretence that he supported her decision.
The court was told that Adelani forced the woman to take five misoprostol 200mg tablets, which he procured from Dublin, and told her how to swallow them and then locked her in a bedroom.
The report added that Adelani was heard in a conversation played to the courtroom telling the woman, “I’m showing you what to do … take this … I’m dead serious … I’m forcing you. I don’t care, take it. It’s either you eat this or I beat that kid out of you tonight. I’m dead serious … I’m forcing you. I don’t care. Take it.”
RTE News reported that a police officer told the court that Adelani was following a process that he researched, and that the victim was crying throughout the recording.
Evidence was said to have been given on how the woman became unwell after she was forced to take the tablets. She came down with a fever, she was shivering, and she also had cramps.
She reportedly went to the toilet at one stage, and she was passing large clots of blood, and she was in great pain, the court was told.
When Adelani left to get a pregnancy test, after he forced her to swallow the tablets, she phoned the police, who arrived at the house before 2.20pm on 14 February 2020, and was taken to hospital where she was treated at a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit.
Adelani was arrested at the scene, and officers seized his phone, which revealed internet searches on conducting an at-home abortion and an audio recording of the ordeal.
Reading out her own victim impact statement, she said that what the defendant did to her did not end when the crime was over.
She was quoted as saying, “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.”
The woman reportedly added that the fact that the incident happened on Valentine’s Day made the pain deeper, adding that Adelani’s denial after the crime caused her another level of harm and left her feeling invisible and alone.
“I lost friends through his denying what he did to me and my unborn child. I lost the support I needed to help me through that time. I will always grieve my child. I will always remember what was taken from me. Healing does not erase the loss; it only means I learned how to live with it.
“I have forgiven the defendant. The forgiveness does not mean what he did was acceptable. It means I refuse to let what he did continue to control my heart and my life,” she was quoted as saying.
Defence counsel James McGowan SC stated that Adelani had struggled with mental health and drug misuse.
The court heard his early teenage years were disruptive and chaotic, and that he had been expelled from school a number of times but had completed his education.
In a letter read to the court, Adelani “heavily apologised,” claiming he now took full responsibility for taking away something that “can never be replaced. It was also my child, and a hole was also pierced in my heart.”
Sentencing the accused to 11 years with the final two years suspended, Judge John Aylmer said the accused man’s actions were “extremely premeditated.”
The report added that Aylmer said it was a further aggravating factor that Adelani was on bail at the time for a previous offence.
Although Adelani had no convictions at the time of the offence, he had quite considerable subsequent convictions, and he was well known to gardaí in the area.
The court heard Adelani is serving a seven-year sentence with the final 18 months suspended for a separate offence, following sentencing last November.
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Later in November 2025, he was sentenced to 21 months in prison for a separate offence. Those two sentences will run consecutively.
Judge Aylmer sentenced Adelani to 11 years in prison, with the final two years suspended for causing the unlawful termination of a pregnancy and five years, with the final 12 months suspended, for assault causing harm.
The two sentences imposed will run concurrently to each other, and they will run consecutively to the sentences Adelani is currently serving in prison.
Following his release, Adeleke Adelani will enter a bond for €100 and has been ordered to keep good behaviour for two years.
