German singer avoids jail over HIV infection
A singer in a German pop group avoided jail today after she was convicted of causing bodily harm to her ex-boyfriend by having unprotected sex with him, despite knowing she was infected with HIV.
Nadja Benaissa, aged 28, broke down in tears after she was given a two-year suspended prison sentence and ordered to carry out 300 hours of community service after she was convicted in a Darmstadt administrative court.
She had faced a possible ten years behind bars.
The court ruled that Benaissa had infected a former boyfriend with the virus that causes Aids by having unprotected sex with him.
Benaissa helped her case during the trial, which began on August 16, by acknowledging she had unprotected sex despite knowing she was HIV-positive and saying it was a big mistake.
“I’m sorry from the bottom of my heart,” Benaissa said, adding that she had realised how much her ex-boyfriend was still suffering.
“I wish I could turn back time and make everything undone,” she told the court. “But I know that he will never forgive me.”
The man who claimed Benaissa infected him said they had a three-month relationship at the beginning of 2004 and that he got tested after the woman’s aunt asked him in 2007 whether he was aware that the singer was HIV positive.
Benaissa said she did not tell anybody about her disease because she was afraid of the consequences – which she described during the trial as a “cowardly act”.
During the trial, microbiologist Josef Eberle, who examined the viruses of both Benaissa and her ex-boyfriend, told the court “in all probability” the singer was responsible for infecting the 34-year-old man with the virus that causes Aids.
Both were suffering from a very rare type of the virus that was first found in western Africa, he said.
Benaissa told the court she became addicted to crack cocaine at 14 and that during her pregnancy at the age of 16 she found out that she was HIV positive.
After winning a TV talent show, Popstars, in 2000, she joined the band No Angels with four other young women and hid her illness from everyone.
No Angels sold more than five million albums before breaking up in 2003.
Along with three other members from the original band, Benaissa helped re-form the group in 2007. They performed in the 2008 Eurovision song contest, but came in 23rd out of 25 contestants.
No Angels were heading into a concert in Frankfurt in April 2009 when Benaissa was taken into custody and kept for 10 days – a move that a German Aids awareness group criticised as disproportionate.
The Deutsche Aids-Hilfe group argued her partners also carried a share of the responsibility for becoming infected, and criticised the verdict.
“If the responsibility for prevention is put entirely upon women and HIV-positive people, we are not recognising the combined responsibility of two people,” said spokeswoman Marianne Rademacher.
