HIV man boasted of using gay beats to spread virus
A Melbourne man accused of spreading HIV boasted of going to gay beats to spread the virus, a jury has heard.
Michael Neal, 49, of Coburg, is on trial accused of infecting two people with HIV and 14 counts of attempting to infect other people. He has pleaded not guilty to 34 charges.
A witness, who cannot be named, told the Victorian County Court today Neal spoke to him about using gay beats to spread HIV.
"He said he liked going to beats because he liked to go out and spread the virus to people," he said.
The witness said Neal invited him to a sex party he was hosting so he too could have sex with a man he had infected.
The witness said he engaged in sexual activity with Neal after they met in 2005 but neither disclosed they were HIV positive.
A second witness who gave evidence today said Neal spoke to him about arranging a "conversion" party.
"He told me he was planning to organise a conversion party where the person would have his HIV status changed," he said.
He said Neal also told him he had chatted online to a man from Sweden who wanted to come to Australia to be deliberately infected.
The witness – who is HIV positive – said he had unprotected sex with Neal after meeting him on gay internet chat site Gay.com in 2000.
He said he assumed Neal was also positive because they did not discuss condoms.
A third witness told the court he had unprotected sex with Neal a number of times but would not have consented if he knew he was HIV positive.
The man said at one stage Neal asked him whether he wanted to "be one of his pos pigs".
He said he did not know what he meant and on another occasion he questioned Neal about his HIV status following health concerns.
He said Neal told him: "You don't need to worry about me mate, you'll never catch anything off me."
The witness said he took Neal at his word and did not seek medical advice.
"I was quite relieved, he put my mind at ease," he said.
Joined: Dec 25, 2001 Posts: 32,389 Location: Liberty City
Posted: Thu 3rd Jul 12:53pm Post subject:
j1015642 wrote:
Spokes wrote:
Yes.
No. It seems his intention was to infect not to kill. Unless one of his victims died in the future from HIV, even then it'd only be manslaughter.
This is the road we were going down at the office. But if someone purposefully gave their victim a huge dose of radiation that medical science believed to be fatal would you have to wait for the victim to die before charging them with attempted murder/ murder/ manslaughter?
Also - you don't have to wait for death to charge for attempted murder, it's ten murder. You need to show an act / acts done intentionally, intended to kill the victim. That's a heavily summarised version.
For example, if I yell out I'm going to kill you, you hairy bellied cycling geek! and then fire my rifle at you, hitting you (or missing) but not killing you - I'm likely to be charged and found guilty of attempted murder.
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