INJUSTICE FOR ALL

There are many things in life I do not understand, and this is not to do with my intellect. Although saying that, the other day in the store I couldn’t do simple arithmetic so the woman could give me my correct change. In my defense, nor could she, but she was looking at this side of 80.

Anyway, a former German pop star (not David Hasselhoff) all of 28 years old, was just convicted of causing grievous bodily harm for not telling her sexual partners she had HIV. She had unprotected sex five times over a four-year period with three different people (math in itself) and told none of them she had the virus. Horrifically, one of her partners became infected.

During the trial she claimed that she did not intend to infect anyone, but did not want to say anything for fear of what it would do to her career as well as her daughter. So let me get this straight, she didn’t intend to infect anyone, but she knew she had the disease and had unprotected sex anyway. And her excuse, fear of what it would do to her, To HER. Not to the other individual’s life whom she has systematically and thoroughly destroyed, but to her. How profoundly unselfish of her. If I was in that courtroom and I was the person she infected, oh man alive there isn’t a chain strong enough in the world to prevent me from lunging across the room and strangling her pop star neck. And I would intend every single moment of pain I carried out.

The most sickening part of all, her punishment: a two year suspended sentence, and 300 hours of community service. Cause community service gives one some serious thinking time to ponder what they have done. What sort of message does this send out (a crap one for starters) to her ex partner that now has the disease? His life means very little? Her actions are permissible because the weapon she used is intangible? I’m sorry, but be it a gun, a knife, or a disease that can KILL you, it all boils down to the same thing. If I fired a gun, but didn’t intend to kill anyone and yet I did, I’d be doing serious time. Fine, you could argue this man could be healthy and fit for the rest of days even with the virus. You could also argue that he is not one of the lucky ones and the virus becomes full blown and kills him. Not to mention the burden he has to now carry around for the rest of his life, dictating how he lives and with whom he has sex. And the only repercussions for this are that she has to go and talk to other people with HIV for 300 hours. Something tells me those people are much more responsible than she is and they should be counseling her! Sadly, in this case it's another instance of the punishment not fitting the crime.