Prison for HIV clubber feared to have infected dozens of men

[KiwiCoromandel]

The first woman to be convicted in an English court of deliberately infecting a man with HIV has been jailed for 32 months.

Sarah Porter, 43, encouraged four men in six months to have unprotected sex with her. One of them, a 31-year-old disc jockey and music promoter, has contracted the virus, which causes AIDS.

The detective who led the inquiry said that if these men had multiple partners since sleeping with Porter, the damage she was known to have done might be "the tip of the iceberg".

Detective Sergeant Brian McLusky appealed for others to contact police if they thought they had been a sexual partner of the single mother from south London. He said after the hearing that Porter had refused to help identify other partners, of whom she is thought to have had dozens in recent years.

Police have no clue as to why she acted as she did because she refused to give a statement.

Porter learnt she was HIV-positive in February 2000, the court heard. She apparently found most of her lovers at nightclubs, mostly among DJs, other performers and their friends.

Detectives began an investigation after a former boyfriend, referred to in court as Mr B, reported Porter to the police. He told officers he had been having regular unprotected sex with her but had then heard rumours she was HIV-positive. Mr B did not contract the virus.

All four of the men, aged 31 to 36, who have been traced were black. Only one, Porter's 31-year-old lover between 2001 and 2004, proved to be HIV-positive, but Judge Quentin Campbell said the life of that man, named only as Mr C, had been "devastated".

In a statement read to the court, Mr C said he had not realised Porter was HIV-positive. "I find it difficult to explain how I felt when I discovered she had unprotected sex with me knowing the risk she was putting me at," he said.

"Had she come clean at that stage, while I do not think I could have forgiven her, I would have had a degree of respect for her."

sources:The Telegraph, The Guardian

[moonglow]

What she did is so WRONG

[moonglow]

There is NO excuse for that