WOBURN, Mass. (Court TV) — A Massachusetts man accused of tricking a woman into taking abortion pills after he got her pregnant succeeded in getting one of the charges against him dismissed.
Robert Kawada appears in court Oct. 2, 2024 with his attorney Rosemary Scapicchio. (Court TV)
Middlesex Superior Court Judge Keren Goldenberg granted Robert Kawada‘s motion to dismiss the charge of attempted poisoning he faced, but upheld a charge of assault and battery on a family or household member. Kawada also faces a charge of assault and battery on a pregnant person. He has pleaded not guilty.
Kawada and a woman — identified only as “complaining witness” in court documents — had met up and had unprotected sex three times before the woman became pregnant. The woman told police that Kawada was initially supportive when she said she planned to keep the baby. Kawada had two children previously, so the woman said she asked him for advice about diet and nutrition.
Prosecutors say Kawada told the alleged victim that she needed to take iron supplements and gave her pills he said were vitamin C and iron. After taking some of the pills, the woman said she suffered severe cramping and bleeding. She went to the hospital, where doctors told her the fetus was still alive.
MORE | Prosecutors once again ask for more time in case against Robert Kawada
When she told that to Kawada, prosecutors said he encouraged her to take more “iron pills,” but the woman demurred, saying she wanted to talk to a doctor first. Shortly before Kawada was due to come over, the alleged victim said she got a call from someone purporting to be a nurse at Massachusetts General Hospital, who encouraged her to take iron supplements.
This time, after taking the pills she was allegedly offered by Kawada, the woman suffered a miscarriage. She brought one of the pills she hadn’t taken to the police, who tested it and confirmed it was not iron or vitamin C, but rather Misoprostol, a drug used to end pregnancies.
In a motion asking for the charges to be dismissed, Kawada’s attorney argued that the defendant never poisoned the alleged victim. In her written order dismissing the charge, Goldenberg said that while the state did present sufficient evidence that the pills the alleged victim were given were Misoprostol, which does constitute a poison, the pills were not mixed with any food, drink or other medicine as required by the wording of the statute. The order also notes that for all the charges the word “victim” refers to the adult woman, because the fetus was not viable at the time of the miscarriage.
But Goldenberg refused to dismiss the charge of domestic assault and battery over Kawada’s arguments that his relationship with the alleged victim did not rise to the level of “substantive dating relationship” as required by law. “While these facts to not overwhelmingly suggest a serious dating relationship, it is enough to satisfy the probable cause standard,” Goldenberg wrote. “It will be for the factfinder at trial to determine whether they had a ‘substantive dating relationship.'”
Kawada’s trial is scheduled to begin on October 19, 2026.
