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 Worby, 40, crushed a tablet into orange juice that the woman drank in 2022.
The defendant, of Dereham, Norfolk, then gave the victim a number of 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 the victim of a sexual offence, was 15 weeks pregnant when she miscarried.
Edmund Vickers KC, prosecuting, told Norwich crown court it was “quite clear” that 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 had “failed to protect my baby”.
“This pain will never leave me knowing that this baby could have been my only chance to be a mother in this lifetime,” she said.
The woman said she had not been able to conceive again and had “gone from fertility clinic to fertility clinic”. “Being a mother was a dream to me,” she told the court.
Vickers said Worby’s offence was “deliberate, well-planned and callous” and he was helped to obtain the abortion drugs by his friend’s partner, Nueza Cepeda.
He said Worby paid £470 to book an appointment for Cepeda with a gynaecology centre in London. The appointment took place in summer 2022 and a prescription was made for the two abortion drugs together with painkillers, the prosecutor said.
Sentencing Worby on Friday, the judge, Mr Justice Joel Bennathan, told him: “You are a selfish man and set about aborting the baby without [the woman] knowing.”
The judge also made a restraining order, barring Worby from contacting the woman indefinitely, and ordered that he pay her £10,000.
Cepeda, 39, of Dereham, was sentenced to 22 months in prison suspended for two years after she pleaded guilty to supplying an instrument to procure a miscarriage.
Andrew Oliver, mitigating for Cepeda, said she had acted out of “misguided loyalty to someone who was friends with her partner”.
He said Cepeda, a cleaner who had no previous convictions, was “devastated she’s played a part in the harm and suffering that’s been caused” and “didn’t receive any financial or other benefits for the part that she played”.
The judge said he accepted she had become involved only “due to the pressure or badgering of Stuart Worby”.
