An Italian court has sentenced an HIV-positive man to 24
years in jail for intentionally infecting 30 women he had unprotected
sex with over nearly 10 years.
Under the pseudonym "Hearty Style", 33-year-old accountant
Valentino Talluto seduced dozens of young women on social networks and
internet dating sites, often dating several at a time.
Rome prosecutors had requested a life sentence for Talluto
but after some 12 hours of deliberation the court decided he should
receive a 24-year sentence after finding he did not cause an epidemic by
spreading a pathogen, which under Italian law would have brought a life
term.
Some of his victims embraced and burst into tears when the verdict was announced, reporters who were present said.
Out of 53 sexual conquests known to have taken place
between 2006 -- when he discovered he was HIV positive -- and his arrest
in 2015, 30 women were allegedly infected by him with the virus which
damages the immune system and causes AIDS.
The male companions of three of the women were also infected, as was the baby of a fourth, investigators say.
Throughout the trial, which opened in March in Rome's
Rebibbia prison, the women described how Talluto had wined and dined
them, claiming to fall in love before persuading them to have
unprotected sex.
The women who had asked him to wear a condom said he told them he was allergic or had just been tested for HIV.
When the women discovered they were HIV positive -- by
chance, due to health problems or after other women he dated raised the
alarm -- they said he said it had nothing to do with him.
Many of Talluto's victims were students, some mothers. The
youngest was 14 at the beginning of their relationship, the oldest
around 40.
Each described the horrors of HIV, from the stigma which distanced even family members, to the trials of treatment.
Some women stayed with him for months after discovering
they were sick. In the end, it was above all his chronic cheating -- he
juggled up to six relationships at the same time -- that drove them
away.
The defence painted a picture of a young man eager for
affection who never knew his father and whose mother -- a drug addict
who was HIV positive -- died when he was just four years old.
Not intentional
Not intentional
"He did not intentionally seek to transmit the virus," his
lawyer Maurizio Barca said, insisting that Talluto used condoms "most of
the time" and only had sex without them a few times after being "caught
in the heat of the
action".
action".
He also claimed it was impossible to prove it was his client and not other partners who had infected the women.
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