Man With HIV Gets Life Term for Sex

A man who spent five years in jail for exposing sexual partners to HIV was sentenced to life in prison for knowingly exposing another woman to the virus.

Sean L. Sykes, 33, was sentenced Tuesday. He had unprotected sex with a St. Joseph woman without warning her about his HIV-positive status. She was not the only women he exposed this disease to, in the trial it was found he exposed it to eight women out of which three have tested positive.

"I think it's fairly clear he is a very dangerous individual," Buchanan County Prosecutor Dwight Scroggins said after the sentencing. "If he is not in prison, he would likely continue to spread HIV."

This was not the first time he was convicted of this crime; he was convicted in 1997 of exposing someone to HIV. He was sentenced to 10 years but paroled in 2003.

Scroggins said Sykes has had several unknown sexual contacts since he tested positive 16 years ago.

"It's not an immediate death sentence," said assistant prosecutor Kathleen Fisher, "but that's what he's done to these people, his victims."

A 29-year-old woman who contracted HIV in the mid-1990s after having sex with Sykes testified at the sentencing hearing that her life had been destroyed by the virus. She is a mother of two children, neither of them have tested positive for the disease. Her doctor said she will die soon in the next few years.

She said her family has abandoned her because they are scared of her. When she heard that Sykes is being tried again for the same crime, she couldn’t believe and doesn’t understand why he would do this to others.

Prosecutors said Sykes began having a sexual relationship with a St. Joseph woman in 2004, never telling her that he had HIV.

Sykes said at the trial that the woman knew he was HIV positive. He apologized Tuesday for his behavior.

"I will admit my behavior in the early '90s, and up until my first conviction, was not appropriate," he said. "Even though (the St. Joseph woman) was aware of my status, I should have seen nothing good would come as far as a sexual relationship."

The justice system should have given him death penalty. Not only these women may be infected, they might have infected others unknowingly, so Sykes has done major harm to others. He could have used condoms but to spread the disease knowingly is equivalent to murdering someone.