Friday, 20 June 2014

Man Gets 95-Year Jail Term for 'Knowingly' Infecting 15-Year-Old Virgin with HIV


A 31-year-old man knew he had HIV when he had sex with a 15-year-old virgin he'd met on a chat line - but she didn't know until she became infected with the disease.

Reese met the girl, who is now 17, when she called a chat line in December 2012 and when her parents caught them talking on the phone, he assured them he was 18.

The two embarked on a seven-month relationship between 2012 and 2013 and after they met at a Dallas movie theater, Reese persuaded her to have sex with him in his car.

When she told him she was a virgin and had never had a boyfriend, he said it was probably because she'd never had sex. He said if she didn't have sex 'it would make a man want to cheat'. 'He told me he could see himself being with me,' she told Judge Pat McDowell in court. 'He was saying all the right things. He was telling me what I wanted to hear.'



Months later, Reese was arrested on drug charges and sent to jail, but he and the girl - who was still unaware that she had become infected with HIV - continued to stay in touch through letters.

She eventually fell ill, lapsing into a coma for two weeks and spending 40 days in hospital after her kidneys failed, and she was later diagnosed with HIV. During a phone call when she was in the hospital, Reese said he had 'symptoms' of HIV, but insisted he was 'clean'.

Her mother, who is just four years older than Reese, said that family members discovered his actual age in September when they looked up his criminal record and learned he had convictions for drug charges, family violence assault, evading arrest and resisting arrest.

When they confronted him about his real identity, he did not deny it, she told the court. The family then called police. The girl must now take medication every day to keep her viral load low.

'There was a point...where I wished death on him,' she said. 'I didn't deserve this. I don't like him at all.'

Matthew Louis Reese pleaded guilty to three charges, including aggravated sexual assault with a deadly weapon for repeatedly having sex with the girl without a condom.

Prosecutors requested he serves 95 years behind bars - aggravated sexual assault of a child with a deadly weapon, in exchange for 55 years, aggravated sexual assault with serious bodily injury, in exchange for 20 years, and sexual assault of a child, in exchange for 20 years

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