AIDS as serial killer

By Suzanne Fields

Nushawn Williams has been a loaded gun walking the streets since September,
1996. That's when health officials tested him and found that he was HIV
positive.

. . . They warned him to take precautions. A health official gave him a
stern lecture about condoms and sent him on his way. Society washed its
hands of the matter.

. . . . In the year after Williams was diagnosed, at least 28 girls in
Chautauqua County, N.Y., say they had unprotected sex with him. He has
infected at least nine "women," some as young as 13 and 14, and at least
one of them passed it on to another man.

. . . The serial infector says there are lots more victims of his "charm."
He boasts of sex with as many as 50 to 75 girls and women.

. . . . How do such things happen? We can count the ways. Girls who had
become addicted to drugs traded their favors, such as they were, for
marijuana or crack cocaine. Some with no selfrespect were flattered by any
man's attention. Others actually liked him. A steady girlfriend, whose test
has not yet come back, says she fears more for Nushawn than for herself.
She worries what the inmates might do to him in jail. (The authorities have
put him in isolation in jail, showing more concern for him than he showed
any of his victims.)

. . . . Joycelyn Elders, the surgeon general in the Clinton administration,
took time off from writing her book about masturbation to blame federal
funding of abstinence programs.

. . . . "We deny our children are having sex and that our teenage girls
are having sex with adults. . . 70 percent of our teenage girls become
pregnant by adult men. . . our adolescent women need contraceptives," she
told the National Press Club in Washington..

. . . . She has a nifty solution: "I'd have a bag [of condoms] on every
corner, so all you'd have to do is reach in and pick them up." This is not
only ludicrous, but reflects the level to which our culture has sunk to
pander to the lowest common denominator of human behavior.

. . . . Can Dr. Elders really believe a drugaddled adolescent whose idea
of deep thinking is a magic trick will have the power of persuasion to get
a lowlife Don Juan to get a condom? She might or might not be surprised to
learn that in Chautauqua County, where Williams plied his charm,
7yearolds are introduced to sex education, and seventh graders learn
about AIDS and how it is transmitted. So much for the prophylactic of sex
education.

. . . What's so terrifying about this serial HIV infector is that it's
not easy to prevent another man from doing exactly the same thing. In New
York a law of confidentiality protects the AIDS carrier from public
exposure. He may be encouraged to come forward to take a test.

. . . . There's no simple way to arm young women with names of wouldbe
killers. Some suggest that it might help to require mandatory AIDS tests
for anyone found guilty of a violent crime, and make his name public if he
is HIV positive. His name would be recorded in a state AIDS registry. The
vulnerable girls (and boys) who are his prey would not seek such
information, but adults in the community might pass on the information.

. . . . Williams was arrested on many occasions for selling drugs, robbing
at gunpoint, stealing a car for a joy ride. He had three convictions. He
once shot a store owner who lent him money. Shouldn't this be enough to
forfeit a "right" of confidentiality?

. . New York officials identified Williams by acting on a phrase in the
AIDS law of confidentiality allowing public exposure if a person poses
"imminent danger." It's selfevident that a man or woman who is
HIVpositive and who seeks sex with another person is an "imminent danger"
to that person.

. . . . We can't protect everyone. Nor should we infringe legitimate rights
of privacy. But if we deprive the violent criminal of his anonymity we're
likely to spare innocents a death sentence.