Civil servant guilty of spiking drink to cause miscarriage

A SENIOR civil servant has been remanded in custody after he was found guilty of spiking his pregnant mistress’s orange juice in a bid to cause a miscarriage.

Married father-of-one Darren Burke, 43, a deputy director for the emergency services mobile communications programme at the Home Office, crushed up an abortion pill and put it in Laura Slade’s glass at her flat.

He earlier encouraged the mother of two to terminate the pregnancy and sent her links to an abortion clinic after she fell pregnant during the course of their five-year affair. She refused to drink the glass of orange juice, which was laced with mifepristone, a medication used to induce an abortion, on December 4, 2020, but suffered an unconnected miscarriage weeks later.

Burke, from Windsor, Berkshire, claimed he had crushed up the abortion tablets after buying them online and flushed them down the sink when it became clear Ms Slade was determined to keep the baby.

He denied obtaining the drug with intent and attempting to administer it to procure a miscarriage.

A jury at Isleworth Crown Court found Burke, who was suspended from his job at the Home Office following his arrest, guilty of the second count on Tuesday and Judge Alastair Hammerton discharged jurors from returning a verdict on the first count on Wednesday after they could not reach one.

Prosecutor Paul Jarvis said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) was not seeking a retrial and the count was left to lie on file.

The judge remanded him in custody ahead of sentencing on June 16 after saying he faces a “sentence of immediate imprisonment of some length”.

Giving evidence from behind a screen, Ms Slade earlier told jurors she made it “very clear” that she did not want an abortion.