Australia: Defendant in AU$750k Sydney gay civil case now faces criminal charges

A 55 year-old gay man who was successfully sued for AU$757,487 in April for allegedly misrepresenting his HIV-positive status as HIV-negative to his former long-term partner who is now also HIV-positive, is now facing criminal charges.

one count of “cause person to contract grievous bodily disease”. He will appear in Balmain Local Court on August 11.

Reporting of both the civil case outcome and the criminal charges has been extremely well done by the local gay newspaper, the Sydney Star Observer.  Its reporting makes for a stark contrast with the local gay press in neighbouring New Zealand, which last year demonised a man accused of non-disclosure who committed suicide following his arrest before any accusations could be proven in court.

Details of the civil case can be found in this report. Notable is the

[AU]$50,000 in exemplary damages [awarded] as an expression of [the court's] “disapproval of disgraceful conduct”.

Mike Kennedy, executive director of the Victorian AIDS Council in Melbourne mentioned the case during the Q&A session of a recent meeting of anti-criminalisation advocates in Vienna (video will be uploaded of this meeting over the next few days).  He noted that since civil cases have a lower standard of proof than criminal cases, it has allowed for extremely damaging testimony as to the impact of being diagnosed HIV-positive to be recorded in court records.  He was concerned that future criminal cases would refer to such testimony (and the damages awarded).

Currently, reporting of this case has remained within the gay press but it is likely that the mainstream media will catch on following the man's August 11th hearing.

This is not the first gay criminal HIV exposure/transmission case in Australia - although it is the first in New South Wales.  Michael Neal was previously found guilty of attempted intentional transmission, rape and reckless conduct in Victoria; a gay male sex worker was previously sentenced to 10 weeks in prison in Australian Capital Territory for being a male sex worker with HIV; and Stuart McDonald faces charges of 'recklessly' infecting eight men in South Australia. His trial begins on Monday, August 2nd.  

Australia: New legal practitioners guide launched in NSW (updated)

Last Thursday, Australian High Court Justice Virginia Bell helped launch a new criminal HIV transmission guide for legal practitioners produced by New South Wales' HIV/AIDS Legal Centre (HALC).

Speaking at the launch, leading civil rights lawyer, David Buchanan, noted that there was a growing tension between the "extraordinary range and depth of the public health forces marshalled against laws that criminalise people with HIV" and public opinion.

However, he said that the movement against criminalisation is not clear-cut, since "the prosecution of people with HIV in [New South Wales] has the potential both to vindicate people’s basic rights to protection from harm, yet also the potential to disrupt one of the world’s more successful exercises in the protection of public health."

The full text of David Buchanan's extremely interesting and insightful address (which, at over 3000 words, plus 30 footnotes, was too long to post in its entirety here) can be downloaded (as a pdf file) here. [Update: June 22nd. The previous version was not correctly formatted and resulted in the notes being out of sync. Apologies. This has now been corrected.]

Update July 1st: HALC tells me they have a limited number of hard copies of the guide available on request.

You can now download a pdf version of the guide here.

HALC also tells me they are working on an Australian-wide version of the Guide, although this is not likely to be ready until late in the year. However, they will have two more publications regarding criminal transmission coming out in July and August which I will upload when I receive them.