US: Iowa woman receives probation after pleading guilty to criminal HIV transmission

Sentencing

Woman placed on probation for transmitting HIV to man

November 27, 2007
Source: Sioux City Journal

A Sioux City woman was placed on probation today after pleading guilty to transmitting the virus that causes AIDS to a man with whom she was having a sexual relationship.

LF, 46, pleaded guilty in Woodbury County District Court to transmission of human immunodeficiency virus, or HIV.

“I was HIV positive, and I didn’t tell (the man) I was,” F said during her plea hearing.

According to court documents, F engaged in a sexual relationship with the man from roughly Feb. 1 through April 30.

Abiding by terms of a plea agreement, District Judge John D. Ackerman suspended a 25-year prison sentence and placed F on four years probation.

Among the conditions of her probation, F must register with the Iowa Sex Offender Registry for 10 years, have no intimate contact with another person, continue her medical treatment and write a letter of apology to the victim.

F’s case was believed to have been the first in Woodbury County in which a defendant was charged with transmitting the virus by sexual contact. In a previous case, a jail inmate was charged after throwing bodily fluids at a corrections officer.