US: Ohio man who disclosed HIV status in court now charged with HIV exposure

Charged

Man who hid HIV status charged with assault

June 30, 2008
Source: The Colombus Dispatch

DELAWARE, Ohio — The secret that authorities say PA kept from an ex-girlfriend could land him back in prison.

A, 44, is accused of not telling his former partner that he is HIV-positive. He was charged last month with felonious assault, authorities said today.

A was charged under a state law that makes it felony for a person who has tested positive for HIV to have sex without telling the partner about the disease.

In a court appearance last year in a separate criminal case, A disclosed to a Delaware County judge that he is HIV-positive and that he had not told anyone but his mother for 17 years, said Delaware Police Sgt. John Radabaugh.

A victim’s advocate who attended that hearing knew of a woman who had had a relationship with A, and the advocate checked whether the two had been intimate, Radabaugh said. The woman said yes but was unaware that A was HIV-positive.

A grand jury indicted A on June 20. The indictment says that from January through October 2006, he “knowingly engaged in sexual conduct with Jane Doe without disclosing that knowledge.”

Authorities declined today to say whether the woman contracted the virus.

A was convicted of arson in September and sentenced to a year in prison. He was released from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction on May 30 after serving about eight months.

Authorities urge anyone who had sexual contact with A to seek HIV testing and call Delaware police at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

 

Editorial comment

A 44 year-old Ohio man, who admitted in court last year that he had been HIV-positive for 17 years and had told no-one but his mother, has now been charged with HIV exposure after a victim’s advocate who attended last year’s trial told the man’s former partner, who then, apparently, complained to the police.

PA was released from prison this May, after serving eight months for arson, and then charged in June with HIV exposure.

The details of this case are appalling, but even worse was the way it was reported on local TV’s 10 News. Part of the report included the following information, which might have been acceptable in the Eighties, but certainly not today!

Delaware County Prosecutor Dave Yost urged anyone who had sexual contact with A. to take precaution and seek HIV testing.

“In this kind of case we’ve got a victim, or more likely, victims who have been given a fatal disease,” Yost said. “The human cost of a crime like this is much more extensive.”

A worked as a cook at a restaurant in Delaware, but prosecutors said that posed no danger to the community, Bell reported.