Edgard Monge (born 1965) is a native of Nicaragua who is serving a ten-year sentence in Kingston Penitentiary, Ontario, Canada, for four counts of aggravated assault[1] after he knowingly had unprotected sex while HIV infected and failed to inform his four sexual partners. Two of his partners also became infected with HIV. One of the two had a child from the union with Monge and the child also contracted HIV. (He was also convicted of one count of unlawfully causing bodily harm to the baby by having unprotected sex with her mother.)[2]
Monge contracted HIV from his late wife, who died of AIDS complications in November 1999. She contracted the virus from a blood transfusion in Nicaragua in 1981. He learned he was HIV positive in November 1999, shortly before his wife died.
Monge commenced his first sexual relationship in January 2000, in spite of a doctor warning him about the risks and advised him to reveal his being HIV positive to potential partners and to use a condom as the protection.
Monge explained that he did not inform his sexual partners because he did not have time and because several of the women were too immature to handle the problem. The sentencing judge called the explanations "pathetic".
According to the evidence presented in court, Monge had the following overlapping unprotected sexual relationships with women:
Victim #1: January 1, 2000 - June 30, 2000. She tested negative for HIV.
Victim #2: June 1, 2000 - May 30, 2001. She is now HIV positive. She became pregnant and her baby contracted HIV.
Victim #3: January 1, 2001 - June 30, 2001. Victim #3 was a teenager. She tested negative for HIV, but developed a sexually transmitted disease.
Victim #4: February 1, 2001 - April 30, 2001. Met Monge at church. Tested HIV positive in September 2001.
In the case of Victim #2, who became pregnant from Monge, he did not tell her he was HIV positive during their relationship and did not tell her after learning she was pregnant. This prevented the mother from taking medication that might have reduced the risk of transmission of the virus to her baby girl during pregnancy. She also practised breastfeeding, perhaps unknowingly passing the virus to the baby girl that way.
According to the evidence presented in court, when one victim broke up with him Monge told her "I gave you a present that no other guy can give you. I gave you AIDS".
Monge knew he was HIV positive and took precautions to protect his four children, for example wearing latex gloves when he cooked and letting another sibling shower his youngest daughter.
Soon to be released from prison (Frontenac Institution), Monge has met a woman at a church he goes to on Sunday. They plan to be married once Monge is released and to reside in Nicaragua. The Correctional Service of Canada has denied his request for marriage.[citation needed]
"This is a man who carried on four sexual affairs of significant length involving frequent sex.... He knowingly and repeatedly risked the very lives of four women and a child by his callous actions which persisted over months. He's largely responsible for the ruination of three lives. The effect of his actions is tragic and immense.... His actions show a callous and cruel disregard for his own flesh and blood.... One must ask why he would date women as prospective wives and mothers, yet knowingly expose them to the risk of infection with the same condition that had resulted in the death of his wife. ... None of these were one-night stands."
Safe sex is sexual activity using methods or contraceptive devices to reduce the risk of transmitting or acquiring sexually transmitted infections (STIs), especially HIV. "Safe sex" is also sometimes referred to as safer sex or protected sex to indicate that some safe sex practices do not eliminate STI risks. It is also sometimes used colloquially to describe methods aimed at preventing pregnancy that may or may not also lower STI risks.
The spread of HIV/AIDS has affected millions of people worldwide; AIDS is considered a pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that in 2016 there were 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS, with 1.8 million new HIV infections per year and 1 million deaths due to AIDS. Misconceptions about HIV and AIDS arise from several different sources, from simple ignorance and misunderstandings about scientific knowledge regarding HIV infections and the cause of AIDS to misinformation propagated by individuals and groups with ideological stances that deny a causative relationship between HIV infection and the development of AIDS. Below is a list and explanations of some common misconceptions and their rebuttals.
Men who have sex with men (MSM) refers to all men who engage in sexual activity with other men, regardless of their sexual orientation or sexual identity. The term was created by epidemiologists in the 1990s, to better study and communicate the spread of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS between all sexually active males, not strictly those identifying as gay, bisexual, pansexual or various other sexualities, but also for example male prostitutes. The term is often used in medical literature and social research to describe such men as a group. It does not describe any specific kind of sexual activity, and which activities are covered by the term depends on context. An alternative term, males who have sex with males is sometimes considered more accurate in cases where those described may not be legal adults.
Criminal transmission of HIV is the intentional or reckless infection of a person with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). This is often conflated, in laws and in discussion, with criminal exposure to HIV, which does not require the transmission of the virus and often, as in the cases of spitting and biting, does not include a realistic means of transmission. Some countries or jurisdictions, including some areas of the U.S., have enacted laws expressly to criminalize HIV transmission or exposure, charging those accused with criminal transmission of HIV. Other countries charge the accused under existing laws with such crimes as murder, manslaughter, attempted murder, assault or fraud.
Bareback sex is physical sexual activity, especially sexual penetration, without the use of a condom. The topic primarily concerns anal sex between men without the use of a condom, and may be distinguished from unprotected sex because bareback sex denotes the deliberate act of forgoing condom use.
Johnson Aziga is a Ugandan-born Canadian man formerly residing in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, notable as the first person to be charged and convicted of first-degree murder in Canada for spreading HIV, after two women whom he had infected without their knowledge died.
R v Cuerrier was a 1998 decision by the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that knowingly exposing a sexual partner to HIV constitutes a prosecutable crime under Canadian law.
Serosorting, also known as serodiscrimination, is the practice of using HIV status as a decision-making point in choosing sexual behavior. The term is used to describe the behavior of a person who chooses a sexual partner assumed to be of the same HIV serostatus to engage in unprotected sex with them for a reduced risk of acquiring or transmitting HIV/AIDS.
Genital herpes is a herpes infection of the genitals caused by the herpes simplex virus (HSV). Most people either have no or mild symptoms and thus do not know they are infected. When symptoms do occur, they typically include small blisters that break open to form painful ulcers. Flu-like symptoms, such as fever, aching, or swollen lymph nodes, may also occur. Onset is typically around 4 days after exposure with symptoms lasting up to 4 weeks. Once infected further outbreaks may occur but are generally milder.
Nushawn Williams, also known as Shyteek Johnson, is an American convicted sex offender who admitted in 1997 to having unprotected sex with numerous girls and women after having been told that he was HIV positive. New York state and local public health officials stated that Williams had sex with up to 47 women in Chautauqua County and 50–75 in New York City. Williams said in a news interview that his actual number of sexual partners was up to 300.
Andre Chad Parenzee is an HIV-positive Australian man convicted of three counts of endangering human life by exposing others to the risk of infection through unprotected sex as he claimed to them that he was HIV seronegative. In one instance he actually transmitted the virus.
Carl Desmond Leone is a Canadian businessman from Windsor, Ontario. Leone was jailed after pleading guilty in a Windsor court to 15 counts of aggravated sexual assault for not informing his sexual partners of his positive HIV status. It is believed he has been charged with exposing more women to the AIDS-causing virus than anyone in Canadian history. Two of his victims have attempted suicide.
The history of HIV/AIDS in Australia is distinctive, as Australian government bodies recognised and responded to the AIDS pandemic relatively swiftly, with the implementation of effective disease prevention and public health programs, such as needle and syringe programs (NSPs). As a result, despite significant numbers of at-risk group members contracting the virus in the early period following its discovery, Australia achieved and has maintained a low rate of HIV infection in comparison to the rest of the world.
Nicaragua has 0.2 percent of the adult population estimated to be HIV-positive. Nicaragua has one of the lowest HIV prevalence rates in Central America.
With an estimated 150,000 people living with HIV/AIDS in 2016, Haiti has the most overall cases of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean and its HIV prevalence rates among the highest percentage-wise in the region. There are many risk-factor groups for HIV infection in Haiti, with the most common ones including lower socioeconomic status, lower educational levels, risky behavior, and lower levels of awareness regarding HIV and its transmission.
Nikko Briteramos is a former Huron University basketball player convicted in 2002 for not informing his partner of his HIV status before having sex. He received national attention after he was the first person arrested under a South Dakota law requiring that persons inform prospective sexual partners that they are HIV positive. He became the central subject of wide-ranging ethical and philosophical debates regarding the unconstitutionality and illegitimacy of partner notification law.
Since reports of emergence and spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the United States between the 1970s and 1980s, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has frequently been linked to gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) by epidemiologists and medical professionals. It was first noticed after doctors discovered clusters of Kaposi's sarcoma and pneumocystis pneumonia in homosexual men in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco in 1981. The first official report on the virus was published by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) on June 5, 1981, and detailed the cases of five young gay men who were hospitalized with serious infections. A month later, The New York Times reported that 41 homosexuals had been diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma, and eight had died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made.
The criminal transmission of HIV in the United States varies among jurisdictions. More than thirty of the fifty U.S. states have prosecuted HIV-positive individuals for exposing another person to HIV. State laws criminalize different behaviors and assign different penalties. While pinpointing who infected whom is scientifically impossible, a person diagnosed with HIV who is accused of infecting another while engaging in sexual intercourse is, in many jurisdictions, automatically committing a crime. A person donating HIV-infected organs, tissues, and blood can be prosecuted for transmitting the virus. Spitting or transmitting HIV-infected bodily fluids is a criminal offense in some states, particularly if the target is a prison guard. Some states treat the transmission of HIV, depending upon a variety of factors, as a felony and others as a misdemeanor.
HIV in pregnancy is the presence of an HIV/AIDS infection in a woman while she is pregnant. There is a risk of HIV transmission from mother to child in three primary situations: pregnancy, childbirth, and while breastfeeding. This topic is important because the risk of viral transmission can be significantly reduced with appropriate medical intervention, and without treatment HIV/AIDS can cause significant illness and death in both the mother and child. This is exemplified by data from The Centers for Disease Control (CDC): In the United States and Puerto Rico between the years of 2014–2017, where prenatal care is generally accessible, there were 10,257 infants in the United States and Puerto Rico who were exposed to a maternal HIV infection in utero who did not become infected and 244 exposed infants who did become infected.
Risky sexual behavior is the description of the activity that will increase the probability that a person engaging in sexual activity with another person infected with a sexually transmitted infection will be infected, become unintentionally pregnant, or make a partner pregnant. It can mean two similar things: the behavior itself, and the description of the partner's behavior.
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