SEX OFFENDERS WITH AIDS: HOW SHOULD THEY BE PUNISHED

Sex offenders is the generic term for all persons convicted of crimes involving sex, including rape, molestation, sexual harassment and pornography production or distribution.[1] While AIDS is defines as a disease of the human immune system that is characterized cytologically especially by reduction in the numbers of CD4-bearing helper T cells to 20 percent or less of normal thereby rendering the subject highly vulnerable to life-threatening conditions (as Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia) and to some (as Kaposi's sarcoma) that become life-threatening and that is caused by infection with HIV commonly transmitted in infected blood especially during illicit intravenous drug use and in bodily secretions (as semen) during sexual intercourse[2]

What should the Philippine government do with regard to cases of sex offenders with AIDS transmitting such life-threatening disease to an innocent person? Our legislature enacted a law with regard to AIDS known as Republic Act 8504 The Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act of 1998. This is an act promulgating policies and prescribing measures for the prevention and control of hiv/aids in the Philippines, instituting a nationwide hiv/aids information and educational program, establishing a comprehensive hiv/aids monitoring system, strengthening the Philippine national aids council, and for other purposes.[3] But the acts punishable provided in the said law are misleading information / advertising, knowingly & negligently infecting others in the practice of one’s profession, violations on medical confidentiality, discriminatory acts & policies.[4] But this is not enough to punish such sex offenders with aids transmitting a life-threatening disease to another.

                There is no law in the Philippines that penalizes sex offenders with aids, but we need this kind of law in order that sex offenders, like in the United States, be punished and regulated. In the United States, during the early years of the HIV epidemic, a number of states implemented HIV-specific criminal exposure laws. These laws impose criminal penalties on people living with HIV who know their HIV status and who potentially expose others to HIV. In 1990, the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which provides states with funds for AIDS treatment and care, required every state to certify that its criminal laws were adequate to prosecute any HIV-infected individual who knowingly exposed another person to HIV.[5]

                The United States’ Jurisprudence provides, Nick Rhoades, an HIV-positive man living in Iowa, who had an undetectable viral load, was sentenced to 25 years after a single sexual encounter during which he used a condom but did not disclose his HIV status (Rhoades v. State of Iowa)[6], A man in Oregon was convicted of ten counts of attempted murder and ten counts of attempted assault based on allegations that he engaged in unprotected sexual intercourse without disclosing his medical condition (State of Oregon v. Hinkhouse),[7] An HIV-positive U.S. Navy officer and Catholic priest pleaded guilty in December 2007 to several crimes committed against U.S. Naval Academy midshipmen he was counseling, including forcible sodomy and indecent assault. Charges of assault were changed to aggravated assault because of his HIV status[8]

                The aids statistics in the Philippines as of the 10,514 HIV positive cases reported from 1984 to 2013, 92% (9,637) were infected through sexual contact, 4% (420) through needle sharing among injecting drug users, 1% (59) through mother-to-child transmission, <1% (20) through blood transfusion and needle prick injury <1% (3). No data is available for 4% (375) of the cases. Cumulative data shows 33% (3,147) were infected through heterosexual contact, 41% (3,956) through homosexual contact, and 26% (2,534) through bisexual contact. From 2007 there has been a shift in the predominant trend of sexual transmission from heterosexual contact (20%) to males having sex with other males (80%)[9] Overseas workers from the Philippines (e.g., seafarers, domestic helpers, etc.) account for about 20 percent of all HIV/AIDS cases in the country.[10]

                Hence, such law like in the United States must also be enacted in the Philippines for the growing number of aids infection in our country, usually coming from sex offenders, for this to be regulated.

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[1] http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/sex+offender

[2] http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/aids

[3] Republic Act 8504 The Philippine AIDS Prevention and Control Act of 1998

[4] Id.

[5] Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 (Public Law 101-381; 104 Stat. 576).

[6] Young, Saundra (November 9, 2012). "Imprisoned over HIV: One man's story". CNN Health

[7] Shevory, Thomas (2004). Notorious H.I.V.: The Media Spectacle of Nushawn Williams. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press

[8] Melloy, Kilian (December 6, 2007). "Navy Chaplain Faces Court Martial for Gay Sexual Assaults".

[9] "Philippine HIV/AIDS Registry Fact Sheet - August 2012". Department of Health.

[10] "Philhealth: Over 2,000 Pinoy workers abroad infected with HIV". GMA News Online. 10 January 2013