LAST UPDATE | 26 Jun 2018

THE FORMER WIFE of a man accused of infecting her with HIV has agreed under cross-examination that she had sex with him in a hotel last May.

The woman had initially denied this but after a court break she accepted she met the accused (27) and had sex with him at that location.

The complainant agreed with Paul Greene SC, defending, that she had remembered this meeting while earlier giving evidence in the witness box.

She denied having sex with the man on two other occasions in 2016, but conceded it “might” be true.

The woman earlier told Dominic McGinn SC, prosecuting, that her former husband “wasn’t shocked” when she received her diagnosis.

She said she became pregnant soon after starting a relationship with the accused man in early 2010 and discovered she was HIV positive following routine hospital tests.

She said he had agreed with her request that he use a condom the first time they had sex, but after intercourse on this occasion she noticed he wasn’t wearing one. The woman told the jury that the accused said he “didn’t like” condoms.

The man, who cannot be named to protect the identities of the complainants in the case, has pleaded not guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm to two women on dates between November 2009 and June 2010.

In his opening address, McGinn told the jury that it was alleged the man was aware of his diagnosis when he infected the women with HIV and this amounted to serious harm.

The man’s former wife told McGinn that she thought the accused “said he was sorry” during a discussion of her HIV diagnosis. She said the relationship ended a few months after she gave birth to their child.

Cross-examination 

The woman told Greene, under cross-examination, that she had gone out with two men prior to the accused. She said she had used condoms with the man she had been seeing directly before the accused and did not have oral sex with him.

Greene put it to her that this man has a different recollection of having oral sex with her, to which she replied: “Ok”.

Greene asked the woman when she last had sex with his client. She replied that it was three years ago and before she gave gardaí a statement in February 2015.

She alleged the man had been “coming and going” to her home around that time and would bang on her door.

The complainant agreed she went to hotels with the man at the beginning of their relationship, but twice denied she checked in to a premises and had sex with him in May this year. She agreed the man kept “videos” of his girlfriends.

The woman confirmed with McGinn under re-examination, that she had used condoms with the first male with whom she had a relationship before the accused.

This complainant’s mother told McGinn that she spoke with the accused at her home about her daughter contracting HIV.

The woman said she was trying to get him to admit he had given her daughter the virus but “he kept denying it”. She said the man told her that her daughter had given him HIV.

The trial continues before Judge Martin Nolan and a jury of eight men and four women.

Comments are closed as legal proceedings are ongoing.