A 28-year-old Nigerian man, Adeleke Adelani, has been sentenced to an effective nine years in prison after a court in Ireland found him guilty of causing the unlawful termination of a woman’s pregnancy by forcing her to ingest abortion pills and imprisoning her in a bedroom at a house in Letterkenny, County Donegal.
The sentence was handed down after the court heard harrowing details of events that occurred on February 14, 2020—St Valentine’s Day—when Adelani coerced his then-girlfriend, who was nine weeks pregnant at the time, into taking five misoprostol tablets against her will. Local media reports, including coverage by The Irish Times and RTÉ News, detailed the evidence presented during the trial and sentencing.
According to court proceedings, Adelani and the woman met via Snapchat while he was a student at Letterkenny Institute of Technology. Their relationship had previously involved a pregnancy in 2019, during which the woman initially agreed to have an abortion. However, when she became pregnant again in January 2020, she reconsidered her position. After visiting a friend in London and reflecting on her circumstances, she decided she wanted to keep the baby.
The court heard that tensions escalated when Adelani discovered that she had skipped a medical appointment intended to arrange a termination. Although he initially indicated support for her decision to continue the pregnancy, evidence presented in court suggested that this was a ruse. He allegedly cancelled a planned holiday and invited her to a property in Ashlawn, Letterkenny, under the pretence of reconciliation and support.
Once at the house, prosecutors said Adelani produced five misoprostol 200mg tablets that he had obtained from Dublin. He then forced the woman to take the medication and locked her inside a bedroom. An audio recording recovered from his phone was played in court, capturing him instructing and threatening her. In the recording, he is heard saying: “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.”
A police officer testified that Adelani appeared to have researched the process of conducting an at-home abortion, following specific steps during the ordeal. Throughout the recording, the victim could be heard crying.
After ingesting the tablets, the woman became seriously unwell. The court was told she developed a fever, began shivering, and experienced severe cramps. At one point, she went to the toilet and passed large blood clots while in intense pain. When Adelani later left the house to obtain a pregnancy test, she managed to contact police.
Officers arrived at the property shortly before 2:20 p.m. on February 14, 2020. She was transported to hospital, where she received treatment at a Sexual Assault Treatment Unit. Adelani was arrested at the scene. His mobile phone was seized, revealing internet searches related to abortion methods and the audio recording of the incident.
In a victim impact statement read in court, the woman described the profound and lasting trauma she suffered. She said the crime did not end with the forced termination of her pregnancy. “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,” she stated.
She described her unborn baby as “real” to her, explaining that she had already formed hopes, dreams, and an emotional bond. She said those plans were “violently stolen” in an act of cruelty she would never forget. The fact that the incident occurred on Valentine’s Day, she added, compounded her emotional pain.
The woman also told the court that Adelani’s subsequent denial of responsibility deepened her suffering and led to a loss of friendships and support networks. “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,” she said. She added that she had chosen to forgive him, clarifying that forgiveness did not imply acceptance of his actions but was a personal step toward reclaiming control over her life.
Defence counsel James McGowan SC submitted that Adelani had struggled with mental health issues and drug misuse. The court heard that his early teenage years were marked by instability and multiple school expulsions, although he eventually completed his education. In a letter read during sentencing, Adelani apologised and claimed to accept full responsibility, stating that he had taken away something that “can never be replaced.”
Judge John Aylmer described Adelani’s actions as “extremely premeditated.” He identified as aggravating factors the deliberate procurement of the medication, the coercive threats, and the imprisonment of the victim. The judge also noted that Adelani had been on bail for another offence at the time.
Although he had no prior convictions at the time of the 2020 offence, the court heard that he has since accumulated a number of convictions and is well known to local gardaí. He is currently serving a seven-year sentence, with the final 18 months suspended, for a separate offence imposed last November. Later in November 2025, he received a further 21-month prison sentence for another unrelated offence, with those sentences to run consecutively.
For the pregnancy-related offence, Judge Aylmer imposed an 11-year sentence, suspending the final two years. A separate five-year sentence, with the final 12 months suspended, was handed down for assault causing harm. The two new sentences will run concurrently with each other but consecutively to the prison terms Adelani is already serving.
Upon eventual release, Adelani will be required to enter into a €100 bond and maintain good behaviour for two years under the conditions of the suspended portion of his sentence.
