Paramedic Sentenced to 10 Years in Prison After Secretly Giving Abortion Drug to Woman Who Was Pregnant with His Child

A paramedic in Scotland, who pleaded guilty to giving a pregnant woman an abortion drug after finding out she was having his child, has been sentenced to 10 years and six months in prison.

Stephen Doohan, 33, learned his fate at High Court in Glasgow on Monday, July 7, when he was sentenced to 10 years and 6 months in prison after previously having pleaded guilty to assault to injury, sexual assault and procuring an abortion, a spokesperson for the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service confirmed to PEOPLE in a statement.

The sentencing comes over two years after he was accused of administering the abortion drug without consent after finding out that the woman was pregnant.

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Per a sentencing statement from the presiding sentencing judge, Lord Colbeck, Doohan — already a married man at the time — met the victim during a 2021 Ibiza vacation and began a “long-distance relationship” before eventually telling her he was already wed.

The woman later discovered she was pregnant on March 14, 2023, traveling to Edinburgh three days later to visit Doohan before the pair agreed to keep the baby, per the sentencing statement. While having sex that night, the woman “felt something hard being inserted into her vagina” before a “white substance” left her vagina the following day, which Doohan claimed was “vaginal discharge,” the sentencing statement notes.

Later that evening, after taking diazepam, the woman awoke to Doohan engaging in “sexual contact” and again felt “something hard enter her vagina,” per the statement. She eventually looked under the mattress to find “a plastic syringe containing crushed tablets which had been pushed to the end of the syringe,” next to “white tablets.”

Doohan admitted to the woman what he did, before she discovered on his phone that he was “researching the topic of abortion.” The pair visited the hospital on March 18, 2023, as Doohan asked her to lie about what happened, per the judge’s statement. The woman was informed she was having a miscarriage during a hospital visit the following day.

She later made a complaint to Doohan’s employer, Scottish Ambulance Service, in May 2023 ahead of his arrest. An investigation by the SAS found that the day the woman told Doohan she was pregnant, he used a work service to search for abortion drugs.

Given Doohan’s guilty plea, Lord Colbeck sentenced him to 10 years and 6 months in prison.

“You have pled guilty to causing your victim to abort. In doing so, you put her through considerable pain over a number of days and have left her facing a lifetime of pain and loss,” the judge said in the sentencing documents. “The effects of what you did to her are eloquently set out in the victim statement provided to the court.”

“Anyone reading that statement would be moved by its terms and by the raw pain that radiates from it. In addition to the physical pain you caused, your actions have caused clearly significant and long term psychological injury,” the sentencing documents continued.

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According to the BBC, Doohan was suspended by the ambulance service and is now no longer employed by them, as the company noted that it “immediately took action to protect the public and liaised with Police Scotland.”

Per the outlet, prosecutor Scott McKenzie said the victim was “significantly affected” by the crimes. Doohan’s legal representation said he was “deeply sorry” for his actions.