US: HIV Criminalisation laws will feature heavily in AIDSWatch 2017 conversations with Members of Congress

Every year, AIDSWatch brings together hundreds of people living with HIV and their allies to meet with Members of Congress with the aim of educating them about important issues involving HIV-positive people in the country.

Presented by The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation, it is the nation’s largest annual constituent-based national HIV advocacy event, and is implemented as a partnership between AIDS United, the Treatment Access Expansion Project, and the US People Living With HIV Caucus.

In order to continue the efforts towards a cure, we must also try and mend social stigma around those living with HIV. But in order to stop new infections and successfully treat those living with the virus, we need compromise and collaboration across all sectors. One of the biggest conversations organizers plan to have at AIDSWatch 2017 centers around HIV criminalization laws.

Last month, a bill was introduced to the California state legislature by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and assembly members Todd Gloria (D-San Diego) and David Chiu (D-San Francisco) aiming to modernize these laws, which criminalize and stigmatize those living with HIV.

The bill was co-sponsored by Equality California, the ACLU California, APLA Health, Black AIDS Institute, Lambda Legal, and Positive Women’s Network. It’s purpose is to repeal all HIV specific laws that criminalize otherwise legal behavior, turning misdemeanors into felonies that put innocent people (like Michael Johnson) in prison simply for being HIV-positive.

“ETAF is putting our hearts into encouraging every state to overturn its criminalization laws,” Laela Wilding, Elizabeth Taylor’s eldest granddaughter and ambassador to ETAF, says to Plus. “Generally speaking it’s about disclosure. The problem with that is in many cases, it becomes a ‘he said, she said’ type of situation where one person may say, ‘yes I disclosed my positive status’ and eventually there’s a possibility that person could come back and accuse them of having not disclosed their status after some kind of sexual encounter or relationship, and then it’s sort of a push and pull. Usually the person who is HIV-positive is the person who is marginalized and often ends up going to jail or prison.”

There are well over 30 states in the United States with laws that discriminate against people with HIV in one form or another, and many of them are written in vague terms so they’re interpreted in different ways. That being said, it becomes incredibly important to monitor the way these laws are written and try to overturn them — much like how Colorado did last year.

Wilding says a major reason for Colorado’s victory was because people in the state were educated on the facts and medical realities of what it means to be living with HIV: that undetectable means uninfectious, yet poz people are stigmatized and marginalized in the criminalization system to almost no mercy.

“[Colorado] overturned those laws by letting people know the facts,” Wilding adds. “Then, almost everyone was behind it. Of course we don’t want to criminalize these people who are living with a disease that is considered treatable to a certain degree. If we can talk about it with our friends, talk about it in the media, I think that state-by-state we can start breaking the stigma down and change these laws. I think once people know about it, they want to help.”

HIV criminalization laws also have an invisible effect on HIV testing. For people who live in a state with these laws, it’s easy for them to brush off an opportunity to get tested. After all, why risk knowing you’re positive if you’re only going to get punished for it? As a result of people being left untested, the number of people living with HIV who don’t know it (and who aren’t getting treated) are left at risk.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in eight people have the virus and don’t know it. And while a new report shows that annual HIV infections in the U.S. dropped 18 percent between 2008 and 2014, it is still evident that Black men are not only disproportionately effected, but are also the most targeted when it comes to criminalization laws.

“The trans community and women, people of color, these people particularly in California, women in California, are being marginalized and criminalized to an even greater degree and I don’t think people have any idea that this is going on,” Wilding adds. “Once we hear about it, we get fire up. We think, ‘Why is our government spending money criminalizing these people?’ We need to protect them, and support them in the right ways. That would reduce the transmission of HIV, which is the point.”

Elizabeth Taylor’s great-grandson, Wilding’s son, Finn McMurray, spoke to Congressional members last year at AIDSWatch about the importance of sexual health education in schools. According to him, there is still very little conversation about treatment and prevention, especially around PrEP. He hopes that will change.

“Most of my peers unfortunately don’t know about these new, or do not talk about, or haven’t considered for themselves, these new breakthroughs,” the 18-year old activist says. “That’s something to work on, actually informing youth and getting youth to talk about it — not only the issues that have been around for a long time, which are still quite prevalent, but the breakthroughs that are happening now and how those can be utilized.”

McMurray will again ask for a cosponsor of the Real Education for Healthy Youth Act, which aims to fund teacher training on sex education and provide grants for comprehensive sex education. “I think that sexual health education is extremely important to not only the fight against HIV, but all STIs,” he reiterates.”The age group of 15-24 make up half of the new infections each year. I think it’s essential for the next generation to make healthy decisions for themselves. I’d really like to see a shift in the conversation that my generation is having. There’s a lot of potential, but we aren’t as a whole being exposed to enough and being pushed and supported to have these conversations.”

AIDSWatch 2017 will take place from March 27 – 28, 2017 in Washington, D.C.

Canada: Advocacy groups hope law criminalising HIV non-disclosure will change soon

Advocates hope for change in HIV non-disclosure law after Ottawa meeting with provinces

Law criminalizing HIV non-disclosure needs to catch up with science, advocates say.

Advocacy groups are hoping the law criminalizing HIV non-disclosure in Canada will change after a meeting between Ottawa and the provinces in the spring.

Under Canadian law, people with HIV are required to disclose their health status to their partner before engaging in sexual activity. Those who don’t can be charged with aggravated sexual assault, whether or not HIV is actually transmitted, and face a maximum sentence of life in prison as well as permanent status as a registered sex offender.

Criminalizing non-disclosure only compounds the marginalization and fear in the lives of people living with HIV, advocacy groups say.

“This is a really important issue. The federal government has made a commitment to review the way our justice system handles HIV-related cases. And that’s something that we fully support and welcome,” Emilie Smith, a spokesperson with the Ministry of the Attorney General, told the Star in an email.

“Ontario is currently working with the federal government on this review — so that work has already started.”

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that a person with HIV can only keep their condition from a partner if they have a low viral load — the number of HIV virus particles in a millilitre of blood — and use a condom.

Advocates argue the law does not take into account science that says that as long as a person has an undetectable viral load, risk of transmission is practically zero, even if the person did not use a condom.

The Canadian medical community has also weighed in. In 2014, more than 70 national AIDS doctors and HIV researchers released a statement expressing concern for the Supreme Court’s approach to nondisclosure as “a poor appreciation of the science related to HIV contribut(ing) to an overly broad use of the criminal law.”

Internationally, the United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) and the Global Commission on HIV and the Law both urged governments to limit the use of criminal law to cases of intentional transmission of the virus.

For advocates calling on lawmakers to catch up with science and reconsider its laws on HIV criminalization, the meeting between the federal government and the provinces cannot come soon enough.

In a 2013 report on the criminalization of non-disclosure and recommendations for police, the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario underlined the “significant scientific consensus on certain key issues” as it relates to the virus.

“For over a decade, HIV has been medically understood as a chronic, manageable infection,” it reads, noting a low or undetectable viral load — usually the result of effective antiretroviral drug treatment — reduces the risks of HIV transmission through sex “to a point where the risk of transmission is negligible.”

The prosecutions are unfortunately having an impact on the most vulnerable people living with HIV, said Ryan Peck, the legal clinic’s executive director.

“There’s also the issue that the current approach to criminal law is impacting people’s decisions to test for HIV in the first place — the current use providing a disincentive to get tested.

“There is a deep fear that what people say to their health-care providers and public health authorities will end up in a court case against them.”

Last month, a protest was held outside the ministry’s office to protest the “overly broad and unjust” charges relative to HIV disclosure.

Ontario leads in the number of people charged with HIV status non-disclosure and 180 people have been charged across the country, Jonathan Valelly of Queers Crash the Beat said at the protest.

The protesters were calling for a moratorium on all HIV non-disclosure cases currently before the courts.

“This issue is just not that cut-and-dry. These cases are highly complex, and no two cases are exactly alike,” said Smith, the attorney-general spokesperson.

“What needs to happen and what is happening, is a conversation that looks at the law, how it is being applied as well as our understanding of HIV. We agree that a review is needed and the federal government has committed to look at the current law critically to see if there are changes to the Criminal Code that need to be made.”

Published in the Star on March 5, 2017

US: In-depth review of scientific studies on the criminalisation of HIV exposure

The Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA) at Yale University has completed an in-depth review of scientific studies on the criminalization of HIV exposure in the United States. The review appears in the current issue AIDS and Behavior.  Dini Harsono, Assistant Director for Clinical Health Services Research at CIRA, is the lead author of the article. Collaborating authors include two prominent members of CIRA’s longstanding work group on the Criminalization of HIV Non-Disclosure, Carol Galletly of the Center for AIDS Intervention Research in Wisconsin and Zita Lazzarini, UConn Health, and CIRA’s Executive Director, Elaine O’Keefe. This is the first comprehensive examination of empirical research on this topic in the US, examining studies conducted between 1990 and 2014. In addition to describing the research and key findings, the review discusses implications for practice and policy that emerge from the studies reviewed, identifies gaps in our current knowledge, and sets the course for future research in this area.

You can read the article here.

UK: Inaccurate information around the risk of HIV or HCV transmission posed to police officers by spitting is stigmatising and hugely damaging

More than 30 years on from the start of the AIDS crisis, tabloids are still spreading a basic falsehood about HIV.

The claim has been repeatedly reported in newspapers amid a row over the use of police ‘spit hoods’ to prevent detainees from spitting at officers.

Amid a clash on the proposed use of spit hoods by the Metropolitan Police, outlets have repeated claims that their use will reduce the chances of officers being infected with HIV or hepatitis C – despite three decades of evidence that it is impossible to get HIV from saliva.

In a joint statement today, the Hepatitis C Trust and National AIDS Trust both expressed concern about the inaccurate reporting, pointing out  that both HIV and hepatitis C “are blood borne viruses, and therefore cannot be transmitted via spitting.” HIV is transmitted from blood-to-blood contact.

Deborah Gold, Chief Executive of NAT said: “HIV is irrelevant to the debate about spit hoods because spitting simply is not an HIV transmission route.

“Using fear of HIV to justify spit hoods is extremely stigmatising and of great concern to NAT. This stigma and misinformation is especially damaging when a false implication of HIV risk from spitting comes from a source that people trust.”

Dr Stuart Flanagan, Clinical Research Fellow, Viral Hepatitis and HIV Medicine, Queen Mary University London, said: “Hepatitis C and HIV are not transmitted by spitting on someone else.

“Although these viruses may be theoretically present and detectable in saliva, the infection and transmission risk is negligible.

“In the UK the majority of cases of hepatitis C are transmitted by blood to blood contact, and the vast majority of HIV cases are sexually transmitted.”

The statement added that the inaccurate claims had been “hugely damaging as they reinforce existing stigma and misconceptions that surround both viruses.

“Such falsehoods also cause unnecessary alarm to police staff. Given the significant challenges faced by police officers in the line of duty, causing them to fear they have been put at risk when they have not places an undue burden upon them, and must not go unchallenged.

“While the debate around the use of spit hoods is an important one for the police, policy-makers and the public, hepatitis C and HIV are of no relevance to it and should not be used as justification for their use.”

Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, who had come under fire after saying there is “no evidence that spit hoods are necessary or useful”, told PinkNews in a statement: “This rational intervention made by the medical community is deeply appreciated.  It is important that medical professionals have clarified this unfounded belief.

“The arguments for spit hoods should be evidence based. The public expect and deserve a national debate to be fact-based, not fear-based.

“Police staff, who are often under incredible stress in the line of duty, should not be led to believe that they are at high risk of HIV or HEP C from spitting.

“Disappointingly this association has been propagated widely across the media, particularly in the past few weeks. Amongst social media users and in major tabloid newspapers, including the Express, Mail, the Standard and the Sun.

“I hope they will widely report this important interjection by Hepatitis Trust and the NAT. “

US: Modernising California HIV-criminalisation laws is crucial to reduce the fear and discrimination that lead to more HIV infections

BY EDWARD MACHTINGER

Pebbles had a life filled with trauma – she had spent most of her youth in foster care and in the juvenile justice system. When she was 17, her mother died. Despite her other problems, it was her HIV diagnosis that caused her the most shame and isolation.

She was so stigmatized by having HIV, so ashamed, so fearful of rejection by family and friends, that she did not tell anyone that she had acquired the disease. This made it almost impossible for her to come to the clinic, to take her HIV medications, and to care for herself. As a result, despite our best efforts, she couldn’t take her HIV medications regularly and died of a completely preventable brain infection. She was 22 and left behind a 1-year-old daughter.

The overwhelming stigma her story illustrates is one of the greatest challenges I’ve encountered in my 20 years as a physician treating women and girls living with HIV. I see this every day in my clinic: Many of my patients do not feel safe revealing their status to anyone for fear of rejection or violence. To make matters worse, California still has a number of laws on the books that, instead of promoting public health, criminalize people living with HIV and add substantially to the stigma surrounding it.

These laws impose draconian penalties on people living with HIV even for activities that carry no risk of transmission. By treating HIV differently than other serious communicable diseases, these laws increase the sense of shame and isolation attached to HIV.

This legislation has never been shown to help prevent HIV transmission. Rather, it makes it less likely that people living with HIV will get tested and seek treatment that makes them incapable of transmitting the virus. These laws actually increase the risk of HIV transmission in our communities.

Since these laws were enacted in the 1980s and ’90s, we have developed potent HIV medications that, when taken regularly, suppress the virus so effectively that HIV-positive people can live long, healthy lives and be completely noncontagious to others – something confirmed by two international studies. We have also learned that HIV-related stigma is, itself, a serious public health issue.

A bill recently introduced in the California Senate would modernize the state’s laws targeting people living with HIV with criminal penalties and bring them in line with how we treat other serious communicable diseases. Senate Bill 239, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, eliminates this form of HIV exceptionalism by incorporating the current scientific understanding of HIV, addressing HIV in the same manner as other serious communicable diseases, and eliminating extra punishment for people living with HIV who engage in consensual sexual activity.

There are many reasons for HIV-related stigma, but state laws that criminalize HIV are among the worst offenders. These laws, as they are currently written, are not only outdated and ineffective, but they are actually dangerous because they create a climate of fear and discrimination that lead to more HIV infections.

SB 239 is not a partisan or political issue, nor is it a matter of conflict in medical science. This is a basic issue of public health. The proposal to revise and modernize these laws is crucial to achieve our shared goals of reducing new HIV infections and helping those living with the virus to be safe, healthy and empowered.

Dr. Edward Machtinger is a professor of medicine and director of the Women’s HIV Program at UC San Francisco. He can be contacted at Edward.Machtinger@ucsf.edu.

Published in The Sacramento Bee on February 28, 2917

Nigeria: On Zero Discrimination Day, Coalition of Lawyers for Human Rights strongly denounce judicial HIV stigma in ongoing child custody case (Press release)

Breach of HIV status confidentiality and discrimination by the Hon Justice Olagunju of the Oyo State Judiciary 

Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. March 1, 2017.

Coalition of Lawyers for Human Rights, COLaHR, is a Coalition of Human Rights Lawyers working on issues of Persons Living With, Affected By or Most at Risk of HIV.

COLaHR has been following and monitoring a case involving a mother living with HIV, which is being adjudicated upon before the Hon Justice Olagunju of Court 7 of the Oyo State High Court of Justice.

Our interest in the matter is basically to monitor how courts, in the dispensation of justice involving persons living with HIV, respect their confidentiality and possible traces of stigma and discrimination, in accessing justice.

COLaHR is concerned with the attitude of the Honourable Justice on all fronts in this regard. On the 20th of February 2017, while lawyers on both sides were delivering their final addresses, the presiding Judge, publicly made comments which publicly revealed the HIV status of the plaintiff. Not only was this wrong and a gross breach of confidentiality, the Judge also made comments obiter in the case of custody of the child, which exhibited gross stigmatisation and discrimination.

The Judge largely stated as follows:

“putting the interest of the child first, imagine the trauma that the little girl will pass through when the news of her mother being HIV-positive spreads across her school.”

The above quote, which was made in passing (obiter) and may not be included in the courts records, is patently discriminatory and coated with stigma. It betrays lack of appreciation of the prevailing HIV and AIDS laws at the federal and state levels. Several questions arise from Justice Olagunju’s statement:

  • What happens if both parents of the child are HIV-positive? Will such a child be handed over to foster parents?
  • Are we saying that persons with HIV in Nigeria are not fit for parenthood?
  • Should all HIV-positive adults therefore be sterilised?
  • Who will spread the news of Omolara being HIV-positive all over her daughter’s school?
  • Is the right to confidentiality of HIV status not guaranteed under Nigerian laws?

COLaHR makes the following findings from our monitoring of this case:

  1. The disposition of Hon. Justice Olagunju clearly casts doubt on the ability of the court not to be swayed by the Plaintiff’s health status in coming to a decision on the matter.
  1. The Plaintiff, in her statements to COLaHR has clearly shown the fear as in above, given her Husband’s request for custody of the child is hinged on HER HIV-POSITIVE STATUS.

It is in light of the above that COLaHR calls on Hon. Justice Olagunju to excuse himself from the case as justice must not only be done, but must be seen to have being done.

We call on the Chief Justice of the State, to direct Hon. Justice Olagunju to step down from the case.

We will in consonance with the law, share our findings with the Federal Attorney General and Minister of Justice and the State Attorney General respectively.

Signed

Roseline Oghenebrume,

National Coordinator, Coalition of Lawyers for Human Rights

Canada: Protesters in Ontario call for an end to the criminalization and stigmatization of people living with HIV

Protesting the Criminalization of HIV

Lives are being destroyed because the laws have not caught up to science.

A couple dozen demonstrators gathered outside the office of the Ministry of the Attorney General on Wednesday to protest the continued criminalization of HIV-positive people in Ontario.

Protesters are demanding an end to the stigmatization of positive status, as well as the ongoing inaction on the part of all levels of government to develop prosecutorial guidelines for legal cases involving HIV-positive people, who are legally required to disclose their status to all partners regardless of the actual risk of transmission.

While there are no official laws criminalizing those with HIV, the precedent of using existing offences—aggravated sexual assault, for instance—against those who fail to inform their partner of their HIV-positive status effectively criminalizes those who have the disease. This is despite the fact that there is growing scientific consensus [PDF] that those who are positive but have a low viral load pose little to no risk of infecting their partner, especially if safety measures (like condoms) are used.

The criminalization of HIV status is part of a larger structure of marginalization, activists say. “This is an intersectional issue, which involves race and class,” says Jonathan Valelly of Queers Crash the Beat. “We know that the people being most affected by this are immigrant men and men of colour. We know that gay men are being targeted, and we know that poor people are being targeted.”

The issue of HIV criminalization, and the stigma of being HIV-positive, came up recently when a Toronto police officer threatened a citizen peacefully filming an arrest. The officer claimed that the man being arrested was “going to spit in your face; you’re going to get AIDS.” This is, of course, patently false—but it reflects the immense stigma that HIV-positive individuals face.

The crowd heard statements read aloud from individuals who were affected by HIV criminalization. One man was incarcerated for not disclosing his status, despite having a low viral load and using a condom. They also heard a statement from Michelle Whonnock, a sex worker from Vancouver who was was jailed for nearly two and a half years for not disclosing her positive status to a client. Her statement described how working as a sex worker was a necessity for her to get by, how she was portrayed in the media as an “HIV infected prostitute,” and how she remains on a sex offender registry—all because she has a disease.

In 2010, then-Attorney General Chris Bentley agreed to develop prosecutorial guidelines that would help protect HIV-positive individuals, but such guidelines simply never materialized. “We have now a growing consensus in the scientific community internationally that if you are a person living with HIV with a low viral load, it’s very difficult for you to transmit HIV,” says Eric Mykhalovskiy, who works with the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure.

“That science has not being taken into account in the approach to criminal prosecutions that the ministry takes. Nor has efforts to ensure that people who are following public health advice, who are using condoms, who don’t present a risk, aren’t prosecuted.”

Published in the Torontoist on February 22, 2017

Canada: Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization hopeful after meeting with federal justice officials but some provinces remain reluctant

Momentum building for HIV law reform

Coalition emerges from meeting with senior federal justice officials last week feeling hopeful, but provinces remain reluctant to commit to moratorium on new charges involving non-disclosure of HIV status

BY

Chad Clarke says his nightmare and rebirth – he uses the two interchangeably to describe his experience with HIV laws and the justice system – made him stronger.

It started on February 12, 2009, when he turned himself in on an aggravated sexual assault charge brought by his former common-law partner. A judge found Clarke failed to disclose his HIV status, but Clarke says he didn’t know he was HIV+ at the time.

He didn’t see the light until he walked out of prison more than two years later in June 2011, but his resurrection as an HIV activist could not have happened without the experience of prison, which led to his resolve to fight so no one would have go through what he did.

Clarke found himself face to face with high-level officials in the federal justice ministry last week, telling his story and reading the testimonials of others who say they have been unfairly treated by the Canadian justice system because of their HIV status. Clarke is part of the Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization, a group of researchers, lawyers, service providers and people living with HIV who’ve come together to capitalize on recent momentum around getting HIV-related laws changed.

Finally, Minister of Justice Jody Wilson-Raybould seems to be listening to the latest science about HIV transmission: it’s a manageable condition for the vast majority of people living with HIV who take antiretroviral medicines. According to the latest research, a person living with HIV with a suppressed viral load for at least six months cannot pass on the virus.

It’s a major reason why advocates are calling for an overhaul of the law. On World AIDS Day (December 1, 2016), the justice minister released a statement acknowledging that “the over-criminalization of HIV non-disclosure discourages many individuals from being tested and seeking treatment, and further stigmatizes those living with HIV or AIDS.”

Clarke feels vindicated after years of feeling alone. Over the phone from his home in Dresden, Ontario, following the meeting, he says, “I’m here to open people’s eyes and let them know what happens to people when they’re criminally charged.”

Behind bars, he told justice ministry officials, people living with HIV are branded dangerous to guards and other inmates. Once he was removed from his prison laundry job after a guard was concerned that he would “give AIDS” to other inmates by handling their clothes. “I just looked at the guard,” Clarke says.

HIV cannot be transmitted through clothes, saliva, touch or a toilet seat. HIV transmission requires an exchange of blood, semen, pre-seminal, rectal or vaginal fluids, or breast milk. It is most commonly transmitted through unprotected sex or sharing of injection drug equipment.

Though the federal government has begun to engage communities on how it might change prosecutorial guidelines to reflect up-to-date science and human rights principles around HIV, some provinces – particularly Ontario, where the bulk of prosecutions occur – continue to ignore further attempts at dialogue.

Police and Crown attorneys here have aggressively pursued aggravated sexual assault charges against people even when they don’t transmit the virus, says Ryan Peck, executive director of the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic Ontario (HALCO). The group has been calling for a moratorium on prosecutions in the province except in cases of intentional transmission.

“This is a very reasonable approach, and a number of communities are speaking up about the current over-broad use of the criminal law,” Peck says, citing a recent consensus statement from 70 leading HIV researchers and academics.

Emilie Smith, a spokesperson for Ontario’s Ministry of the Attorney General, responding via email to NOW’s request for comment, says that the Ontario government “is committed to working with the federal government to examine the law on this important issue.”

But she says that Crown prosecutors will continue to take direction on current HIV non-disclosure cases from the 2012 Supreme Court of Canada ruling on R. v. Mabior. Critics say the ruling outlines too low a threshold for conviction. The ministry, she says, has no further comment on the request for a moratorium until the federal government and provinces can agree on prosecutorial guidelines on the issue.

Clarke continues to push forward, telling his story and calling for greater justice for those still caught up in the system.

“There are other people out there who are experiencing this right now,” says Clarke. “It choked me up at one point when I was reading one of the testimonies, because this is not right. It’s not right.

“I can live with my HIV. It’s the PTSD that I don’t like,” says Clarke, who recently went on medication “to be able to sleep through the night, not have nightmares about people dying or stabbing one another in jail.”

Clarke, who used to be an X-ray technician, must also live the rest of his life as a registered sex offender, which affects his ability to find work. “I can’t even volunteer at an old folks home. They’re going to do a vulnerable sector screening check, and my name is going to come up on the registry.”

Published in Now on February 19th, 2017

Canada: Rally against HIV criminalisation planned in Toronto for February 22 at noon

HIV is NOT A Crime! – Action against HIV criminalization

Wednesday Feb 22 12:00pm-1:30pm in Toronto
AIDS Action Now! and Queers Crash the Beat invite you to tell the Attorney General that HIV IS NOT A CRIME!

Gather for a rally this Wednesday, February 22 @ 12 noon

Ministry of the Attorney General, 720 Bay St

Ontario continues to lead Canadian provinces in charges against people living with HIV for not disclosing their status, even when they have taken precautions to protect their partners, when there no risk of transmission, and when no transmission has taken place. People are being prosecuted for aggravated sexual assault, one of the most serious charges under the Criminal Code. Conviction carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment and a mandatory designation as a sex offender for a minimum of 20 years.

Analysis of prosecutions shows a disproportionate number of charges against racialized people and a growing number against gay men. There is also deep concern that women with HIV who are in abusive relationships will face aggravated sexual assault charges in situations where they cannot safely impose condom use nor disclose their HIV status.

The current approach of the criminal law towards “risk” is completely out of line with current HIV science. It is clear, for example, that people living with HIV who have an undetectable viral load do not transmit HIV to their partners. Over 70 leading scientists working in the field of HIV expressed serious concern with the law in their Canadian consensus statement on HIV and its transmission in the context of criminal law (http://www.aidslaw.ca/site/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Canadian-statement1.pdf)

The federal government has also expressed concern. In a December 2016 statement (http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=1163979), the Minister of Justice stated that,

“… the over-criminalization of HIV non-disclosure discourages many individuals from being tested and seeking treatment, and further stigmatizes those living with HIV or AIDS. Just as treatment has progressed, the criminal justice system must adapt to better reflect the current scientific evidence on the realities of this disease.”

As pressure increases at the federal level, we must pressure the provincial government! They are responsible for carrying out these laws, to act immediately to stop the overreaching and violent criminalization of HIV.

We echo calls from the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure and demand that Attorney General Naqvi immediately takes the following actions:

1. Impose an immediate moratorium on all HIV non-disclosure prosecutions, unless there is alleged intentional transmission of HIV, while law reform options are being explored and sound prosecutorial guidelines are being developed – in conjunction with the community – to limit the current misuse and overextension of the criminal law.

2. Publicly state that the Ontario Ministry of the Attorney General is committed to ending the overly broad application of the criminal law in cases of alleged HIV non-disclosure and to reviewing Ontario’s approach to these prosecutions.

3. Engage in meaningful dialogue with the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure (CLHE) as well as people living with HIV and scientific experts when developing prosecutorial guidelines and other responses to this issue.

For many years, community members have highlighted the injustices taking place and conveyed the unacceptable reality that such prosecutions are having a disproportionate impact on the most marginalized and vulnerable of persons living with HIV. It is time for Ontario to show true leadership. Unjust and harmful prosecutions must end NOW.

US: Naomi Wilding, Elizabeth Taylor's granddaughter, on why the proposed bill to reform HIV criminalisation laws in California is such an important step in the fight against HIV

It is widely unknown amongst the general population in the U.S. that we currently have antiquated and discriminatory laws that criminalize people living with HIV.

Two thirds of U.S. states, territories, and possessions have HIV-specific criminal statutes used to prosecute people with HIV. Most Americans would be shocked to learn that the only country that has prosecuted more people based on HIV status than the U.S. is Russia.

Repealing these laws would have been a priority for my grandmother, and I feel it is more important than ever to shine a light on these issues, especially given the new political climate we’ve entered.

Published in the Hill on February 16, 2017

Legislation criminalizing HIV began in the early 1980s when contracting the disease was thought of as “a death sentence.”

Three decades later, this is no longer the case. Current HIV medication, when taken regularly, reduces viral load (the amount of HIV in your blood) making it almost impossible to transmit the virus.

We also now have medications that can prevent HIV transmission — a daily pill called PrEP that some people have compared to the birth control pill, but for HIV prevention. Yet, the laws have not caught up with medical advances.

Most of the laws are about disclosure and make it illegal for a person with HIV to engage in sexual contact without first disclosing their status. It doesn’t matter if the person has an undetectable viral load and/ or uses a condom and no HIV transmission occurred. In some places spitting or exposure to saliva can be prosecuted as a felony, even though we’ve long known that HIV can’t be transmitted through saliva.

My advocacy work with The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and our grantee partner, SERO Project (a network of people with HIV and allies fighting for freedom from stigma and injustice), has introduced me to some heartbreaking stories of people whose lives are ruined by these unjust laws: Kerry Thomas, a grandfather in Idaho, is serving 30 years in prison for consensual sex where both parties agreed that he always insisted on using condoms.

His medical records show he had an undetectable viral load and the virus was not passed, yet Kerry was convicted anyway. And Willie Campbell, who is serving 35 years in a prison in Texas for spitting, after the court classified the homeless man’s saliva as a “deadly weapon”.

These cases are not just happening in ‘red states.’ The state of California has arrested and charged more than 800 people under HIV criminalization statutes between 1988 and 2014.

This is a human rights issue. Lack of education and misinformation are being used as weapons of blatant discrimination. In fact, most of the laws are very vague, leaving too much to interpretation and potential discrimination.

According to the CDC, as of 2015, 92 percent of new infections occur from people who do not know their status or are not on treatment. If laws criminalizing HIV and stigma were gone, people would feel more at ease to disclose their status, whether at work, or in an intimate or sexual relationship, ultimately resulting in more people getting tested, knowing their status and directly reducing the spread of new HIV infections.

Laws that criminalize HIV increase stigma and discrimination. They hinge on the disclosure requirement, which frequently comes down to “he said-she said”, with the HIV-positive person more often than not perceived as a villain, and facing an assumption of guilt when in a courtroom.

Using updated scientific facts to educate the public can work. In Colorado, the state legislature recently voted to pass Senate Bill 146, repealing two HIV criminalization statutes and reforming others. “Most people really knew very little about this topic. Yet when presented with evidence, they quickly agreed these laws are anachronistic and are no longer based on current science and medicine,” Colorado Senator Pat Steadman said of the success local advocates had in changing the outdated legislature.

Now in California there is an opportunity to pass legislation that is inclusive, updated, and reflective of the advances we make in society.

Last week, California Senator Scott Weiner and Assembly members Todd Gloria and David Chiu introduced Senate Bill 239, a bill that will modernize laws that criminalize and stigmatize people living with HIV.

Passage of reforms like Senate Bill 239 are necessary next steps in the fight against HIV in the U.S. and around the world. We know that marginalized communities face huge disparities with HIV and AIDS rates, and specific HIV criminalization laws only exacerbate this fact.

Most people faced with HIV criminalization charges in California include people of color, cis and transgender women, and LGBTQ youth.

Thankfully we also have organizations like Equality California, the ACLU, Positive Women’s Network, and others who support medically and scientifically accurate information pertaining to HIV, and continue to work with members of the Californians for HIV Criminalization Reform (CHCR) coalition to ensure justice and empathy for people living with HIV. One thing we should all know: HIV is not a crime.

My grandmother’s work as an activist and advocate is inspiring. She had such visibility and used it so brilliantly to help raise awareness and ease the suffering of those with HIV. And while we don’t all have that same kind of visibility, if we all work to speak out about intolerance, and we do what we can to raise awareness, then we become a movement, and that’s what becomes a force for change.

Naomi Wilding is granddaughter of the legendary actress and humanitarian, Elizabeth Taylor. She is now an ambassador of The Elizabeth Taylor AIDS Foundation and has pledged to do what she can to help those living with HIV and AIDS, and in creating an AIDS-free generation.