PANOS London - Friday, August 1997
Helen Epstein

A Finnish court sentenced 35-year-old Steven Thomas -- a resident of Finland -- to 14 years in prison in July and ordered him to pay damages of between 63,000 and 73,000 dollars to each of five women he infected with the virus.

The case has attracted enormous publicity in the West, and could have an influence on similar cases in other countries where the AIDS epidemic is far more advanced than in Finland, health and legal experts say.

There have been only 201 recorded deaths from AIDS in Finland and 600 infected people. In comparison, rates of HIV infection in neighbouring Sweden alone are seven times higher. And legal cases similar to Thomas' are cropping up in developing countries like Zimbabwe and Cyprus.

The British government recently said it is considering making it a criminal offence to intentionally infect another person with a disease such as HIV/AIDS. The announcement came after the conviction of a man in Cyprus for intentionally infecting a British woman tourist with HIV.

The move has been widely denounced by AIDS charity workers like Derek Bodell, Director of the National AIDS Trust. "Cases will be difficult to prove, the law could be misused for vengeance.... and it may discourage people from finding out the results of a HIV diagnosis as then they could always plead ignorance," he said.

The case in Finland has also led to charges of racism. Thomas is a black would-be musician who played in night clubs. Married with two children, his wife tested positive in 1993 and, shortly after, he did too. In January he was remanded to a Helsinki prison and held without bail during his trial which ended on July 10.

Markuu Fredman, a Helsinki lawyer who represented six of the women plaintiffs, was first alerted by a woman who believed she was infected by Thomas. Fredman informed the police and within weeks, Thomas' photograph appeared in the newspaper.

Arno Arvela, Thomas' lawyer believes that the picture would never have been published if Thomas were white. The storm of publicity -- in a country where blacks account for only one in a thousand residents, most of them African refugees -- has not helped Thomas' case.

"There was a lot of publicity about the case because he was black. I think the publicity influenced the judgement, he was really judged beforehand," says Bengt Lendblom of the Helsinki AIDS Council.

Thomas now intends to appeal. Unusually for a prosecution lawyer, even Fredman thinks that Thomas' sentence was too harsh by Finnish standards. "I think the court may have made a mistake," says Fredman. "The appeals court will probably take around three years away."

Because this is his first offence, Thomas will serve only half his sentence in jail -- he can expect to be paroled in 2004.

Thomas' lawyer Arvela admits that his client is guilty, but not of attempted manslaughter, an act which necessarily implies intention to kill. Arvela says people with HIV very rarely intend to harm others. "In many situations HIV positive people try to go on living as they were before, and it is very human to just keep it out of your mind."

According to Arvela, there are few resources for HIV-positive people in Finland. "The health care system must take better care of these people than it does today, not just test people and send them away. They need support and counselling. That's the only way we can handle this disease."

Worldwide, a small number of court cases have involved deliberate HIV transmission since the early 1980s. But despite their rarity, these cases received enormous publicity.

Most involved some form of violence, such as rape, forced or threatened exposure to infected bodily fluids or -- in a very small number of cases -- biting. Existing laws against rape or assault have been considered adequate to deal with most of these cases.

Now, however, many more cases in Cyprus, Sweden, Zimbabwe, Canada and elsewhere have arisen where both partners agreed to sex but one partner did not know the other was HIV-positive. Whether the infected partner should be liable to criminal prosecution raises questions about how the ultimate responsibility for controlling the spread of HIV should be apportioned between the individual or the state.

AIDS support organisations argue that criminalising HIV exposure through consensual sex diverts resources and media attention from more vital AIDS prevention activities including counselling and support for those living with the virus and education for all about the risks of infection. It also places all responsibility for AIDS prevention on those who are already HIV infected.

"Criminalising HIV transmission will not encourage safer sex," says Gail Lyes of the Terrence Higgins Trust in Britain.

"It will only discourage people from testing and disclosing their status, driving HIV and AIDS underground. Everyone is responsible for practising safer sex, including Steven Thomas and his partners."

"It gives the wrong signal to the public about people with HIV," says Lendblom. "It makes them all seem like criminals and stigmatises them."

But Lendblom is optimistic that the Thomas case may ultimately lead to changes in the way people with HIV are treated in Finland. "It's being discussed in the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs. More emphasis will be placed on support and counselling , especially for foreigners." (END/PANOS/HE/DDS/97)

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