Woman jailed for deliberately giving man HIV

A British woman was jailed for 36 months yesterday for deliberately infecting her lover with HIV.

Sarah Jane Porter, 42, was sentenced at Inner London Crown Court after admitting grievous bodily harm recklessly.

One of her victims, a 36-year-old man, said she did not reveal she was HIV positive and encouraged him into having unprotected sex.

In May 2005 he contacted police who tracked down some of Porter's lovers.

One of them, a 31-year-old man who was her lover for two years, is HIV positive.

Forensic tests, carried out during a year-long investigation by police, proved that Porter, from Kennington in south London, was the source.

Porter, who refused to help detectives track down her victims, deliberately led these men into a potentially lethal nightmare, said Detective Sergeant Brian McClusky of Brixton police. "Once found, we were then introducing them (her victims) to a potential nightmare," McClusky said in a statement issued after the court hearing.

"It is hard to comprehend how or why Porter set about this deliberate chain of events. She gave us no help to identify potential victims throughout the investigation."

Deborah Jack, chief executive of the National AIDS Trust, said she had serious concerns about the way the Porter case had been investigated.

"The prospect of the police investigating the sexual history of people living with HIV in this speculative way is profoundly stigmatising, and appears to treat everyone with HIV as a potential criminal," Jack said in a statement.

Porter will serve half of her sentence in jail and the rest on licence.