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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.
Bugchasing is the particularly rare practice of intentionally seeking human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection through sexual activity.
Michael del Marco Lupo was a serial killer originally from Italy, who was active in the UK. He operated from the Yves Saint Laurent boutique in Brompton Road, London during the 1980s.
The global epidemic of HIV/AIDS began in 1981, and is an ongoing worldwide public health issue. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of 2021, HIV/AIDS has killed approximately 40.1 million people, and approximately 38.4 million people are infected with HIV globally. Of these 38.4 million people, 75% are receiving antiretroviral treatment. There were about 770,000 deaths from HIV/AIDS in 2018, and 650,000 deaths in 2021. The 2015 Global Burden of Disease Study estimated that the global incidence of HIV infection peaked in 1997 at 3.3 million per year. Global incidence fell rapidly from 1997 to 2005, to about 2.6 million per year. Incidence of HIV has continued to fall, decreasing by 23% from 2010 to 2020, with progress dominated by decreases in Eastern Africa and Southern Africa. As of 2020, there are approximately 1.5 million new infections of HIV per year globally.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Saudi Arabia face severe repression and legal challenges not experienced by non-LGBT residents. LGBT rights are not recognized by the government of Saudi Arabia. Both male and female same-sex sexual activity is illegal.
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.
Infection with HIV, a retrovirus, can be managed with treatment but without treatment can lead to a spectrum of conditions including AIDS.
Richard J. Schmidt was an American former physician who was convicted by a Louisiana court in 1998 of attempted second degree murder for injecting his mistress, Janice Trahan, with HIV. The case marked the first time in forensic history that viral RNA was used to prove a link between two people with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) in a criminal trial.
In Western Europe, the routes of transmission of HIV are diverse, including paid sex, sex between men, intravenous drugs, mother to child transmission, and heterosexual sex. However, many new infections in this region occur through contact with HIV-infected individuals from other regions. In some areas of Europe, such as the Baltic countries, the most common route of HIV transmission is through injecting drug use and heterosexual sex, including paid sex.
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.
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.
Edgard Monge is a native of Nicaragua who is serving a ten-year sentence in Kingston Penitentiary, Ontario, Canada, for four counts of aggravated assault 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.
A pin prick attack is an assault on another person with a needle or syringe tainted with the blood of somebody carrying a blood-borne disease, such as HIV. Although there have been numerous cases of people being attacked with needles and syringes, the idea that people infected with AIDS have deliberately attempted to infect others in this manner is generally considered an urban legend, real cases of infection of HIV in this manner were typically taken from infected victims rather than from infected attackers.
Sexually transmitted infections in the pornography industry deals with the occupational safety and health hazard of contracting sexually transmitted infections (STIs) by workers in the sex industry. Since the 1980s many cases of pornographic performers contracting HIV/AIDS have been reported. However, since the mid 2000s strict adherence to rigorous STI testing, and limiting sexual contact with only fellow tested performers has halted the spread of HIV and other STIs in the industry.
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.
Simon Mol was the pen name of Simon Moleke Njie, a Cameroon-born journalist, writer and anti-racist political activist. In 1999 he sought political asylum in Poland; it was granted in 2000, and he moved to Warsaw, where he became a well-known anti-racist campaigner and alleged spreader of the HIV virus.
Thomas Miguel Guerra, also known as Ashton Lucian Chavez and Tomii Guerra, is an American landscape architect who became the first person in the state of California to be convicted for intentionally infecting another individual with HIV. In 2015 prosecutors in the San Diego County Superior Court presented 11,000 text messages and 36 audio clips to support their case against Guerra. Since then, Guerra has been accused of intentionally exposing dozens of other men to HIV. Guerra is the great-nephew of labor leader and civil rights activist Cesar Chavez.
The case of the Healer of Berne involves an Italian-Swiss music teacher and owner of an acupuncture practice which operated without a license. He is accused of knowingly infecting at least 16 people with the HIV virus, and 14 of them were also infected with Hepatitis C.
The first case of HIV in a woman was recorded in 1981. Since then, numerous women have been infected with the HIV/AIDS virus. The majority of HIV/AIDS cases in women are directly influenced by high-risk sexual activities, injectional drug use, the spread of medical misinformation, and the lack of adequate reproductive health resources in the United States. Women of color, LGBTQ women, homeless women, women in the sex trade, and women intravenous drug users are at a high-risk for contracting the HIV/AIDS virus. In an article published by the Annual Review of Sociology, Celeste Watkins Hayes, an American sociologist, scholar, and professor wrote, "Women are more likely to be forced into survival-focused behaviors such as transactional sex for money, housing, protection, employment, and other basic needs; power-imbalanced relationships with older men; and other partnerings in which they cannot dictate the terms of condom use, monogamy, or HIV." The largest motivator to become part of the sex trade was addiction, the second largest being basic needs, and the third was to support their children/family.
References
- 1 2 "Man jailed for infecting 30 women with HIV". Bbc.com. 27 October 2017. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
- ↑ "An Italian man who intentionally infected women with HIV has been jailed for 24 years". Independent.co.uk. 27 October 2017. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
- ↑ Staff; agencies (27 October 2017). "Man who infected more than 30 women with HIV jailed in Rome". Theguardian.com. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
- ↑ "Italian man sentenced to 24 years for infecting dozens of women with HIV". Telegraph.co.uk. Reuters. 27 October 2017. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
- ↑ "Italian handed 24 years jail for infecting 30 women with HIV". Channelnewsasia.com. Retrieved 30 October 2017.