- Christopher Everett
A 26-year-old Central Texas man is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon — a first-degree felony — for having unprotected sex with a 16-year-old male without disclosing his HIV-positive status, according to News Channel 25.
The suspect, Christopher Everett, met the alleged victim on Grindr, the popular gay hookup app whose name the TV station misspells and puts in quotes (“Grinder”). The story doesn’t say whether the victim contracted HIV from the encounter, which occurred in October:
The affidavit describes how 26-year-old Christopher Everett allegedly met a 16-year-old boy on an adult social networking site called “Grinder.” The two chatted via cell phone and decided they would get together on a Friday night in October.
During an interview with police, the teenaged victim explained how Everett invited him to his home in Copperas Cove. The victim told police how he snuck out of his parent’s house and met Everett just before midnight. The two then rode together to Everett’s home in Copperas Cove.
The victim learned from another Grindr user that Everett is HIV-positive. Everett is being held on $50,000 bond.
I am disgusted with this story. I feel bad for people living with HIV, but I get disgusted when you hear stories of people lieing or not disclosing their status and then having unprotected sex. Yes, it is everyones responsibility to protect themself, but if you have the disease, you should do the humane thing to do and stop and discuss before going bare. No excuses. No matter how you caught it. Don’t make the decision for somebody else. I hope they lock this guy up for a very long time and hope it sends a message to others that might think of doing the same thing as him.
Let’s not beat the “he should advertise he has HIV” drum too loudly because the real issue with this situation is that the man knowingly had sex with someone and did not inform them of his HIV status in private. Asking someone to disclose their status is a huge intrusion into privacy.
Heck if we start going down the path of pointing the self-righteous finger at others about HIV we might as well open up the gates that require everyone (especially males gay or straight) to advertise their STD history. I’m pretty sure there are hundreds of people who’ve had crabs or something worse that they’ve never told subsequent partners about.
Anyway, my biggest problem here is that this kid was using a service clearly labeled for adult use (you literally have to click Yes on a warning about the app being 17+). The law has not caught up with how teenagers just at or beneath the age of consent are using technology in ways it wasn’t intended.
This story is troubling to me for a couple reasons.
First, someone clearly failed this kid somewhere along the line because he clearly didn’t get the message about having safe sex. (Especially with a complete stranger!) I have to wonder if that’s because of anti-gay attitudes or all these “abstinence-only” sex ed courses I’ve heard about.
Second, this prosecution is a dangerous precedent. While I think Everett should most definitely have been responsible and done the right thing, charging him with a felony for it is dangerous territory. Who’s next? The HIV-positive victim of a mugging who didn’t tell the paramedic his status while he was losing a lot of blood? The lady with H1N1 who went to work sick and infected her co-workers? The kid with streph who passes it on to his elderly neighbor?
Yes, Everett was irresponsible. So was this kid, his parents, and his health teacher(s). So are plenty of other people. I have to wonder what kind of a world we’ll end up with when people get prosecuted for the viruses they catch. HIV is not a weapon, it’s a medical condition. Treating it as anything else risks the civil rights of those infected as well as their opportunities for life-saving treatment.
Jonah,
Your theories and logic don’t add up. Everett is accountable for his actions.
“Asking someone to disclose their status is a huge intrusion into privacy.”
What the hell are you smoking, Mike? First of all, I’ll happily take an intrusion into privacy in the interests of self preservation over not knowing my partner’s status any day. One should always assume that the other person is positive so that one can take appropriate precautions, but the decision as to how far to venture with the sexual contact should be weighed in light of that information.
Secondly, to equate all STD’s to one another is absurd in the extreme. Crabs can be taken care of with little effort. The same is true for some other STD’s wherein the person needs to only take a pill and get some shots. HIV? Not so. In the absolute very best situations, HIV is a chronic illness which will require daily medication for the rest of a person’s life. At the worst, it’s still a fatal disease.
Besides that, only current STD info need be disclosed. The concept that a person should have to say to a potential sex partner, “Oh, and 15 years ago I got crabs. Then 10 years ago I got syphilis, but got it cleared up and I’m clean now,” in contrast to, “I’m HIV positive,” is ridiculous. This pseudo-levelizing logic of yours fails.
How many people have died, will die, or had to be on an anti-retroviral regimen for the rest of their lives because of crabs? None.
Bravo Dustin! Your stance is an inconvenient truth that many liberal and extremist fractions try to downplay an marginalize.
The most amazing, loving, and caring man I know just got HIV from his rather slutty, now ex-boyfriend. Just like the kid in this article, the ex-boyfriend got it from someone he met on Grindr. This is a horrible issue in the gay community and is not something that can fairly be compared to any other STD. The disease is not only an inconvenience, such as crabs or chlamydia, but deadly. HIV will develop into full blow AIDS and end lives if untreated. If an HIV positive individual were to pass this on to someone else thru something like a shaving razor, what incentive would that man have for getting tested? If he was in a committed relationship without any known risk of contracting the disease he could be HIV positive for years, putting other people at risk, and not even know until years down the road when his health began to decline. The man who gave this disease to my friend was well aware of his HIV positive status before doing so. And although the victim in any situation such as this is responsible for not taking precautions before hand, stupidity shares no moral disregard as does evil. And it is evil for anyone to knowingly give to someone else HIV without full disclosure. To fool someone into trusting you with something as intimate as sex only to hurt them in such a self-indulgent manor is not only inexcusable but revolting. And although I do regard Grindr as responsible for this situation they cannot ignore their role in the spreading of HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. 1 in 5 gay men in the United States have HIV and I am willing to bet that static is some degree higher for individuals on Grindr. This man who so viciously hurt my friend is continuing to have unprotected sex with “friends” he meets on this app and app like it. If the people at Grindr had any moral conscious at all they would implement a feature that allows users to be honest about their STD status. Until then I cannot recognize them but anything other than part of the problem.