Canada: Ontario woman pleads guilty, gets four years in prison

A former sex worker from Kitchener, Ontario been sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to criminal negligence causing bodily harm and sexual assault.

Lara Dick, who tested positive in 2006, was originally charged with aggravated sexual assault.

The male complainant was a former client who ended up having a relationship with her, according to the report in The Record.com.

Court heard the man met her on the street in Cambridge in January 2008 and hired her as a prostitute. They had sex twice and the third time, he asked her for a coffee. They developed a relationship and the man ended up helping her get off the street. They were living together at the Knights Inn in Kitchener when he found out she was HIV positive. The man learned Dick had the virus after his dog knocked over her purse and a letter from the public health unit fell out, court heard. The letter mentioned her obligation to inform any sexual partners of her HIV status. She also has Hepatitis C.

[...]

Dick has 41 months of her sentence left to serve after the usual double credit for her time in pretrial custody is taken into account.

Of note, she was pregnant when she met the male complainant, who tested HIV-positive last year. According to the report: "The baby did not contract the virus because Dick took drugs to prevent it."