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Man Pleads Guilty (Again) After Failing To Tell Women He Had Sex With That He Was HIV Positive
Travis Spoor has been arrested three times for not disclosing his HIV status to sexual partners.
An Indiana man who has been caught in three separate counties for failing to reveal his HIV status to his sexual partners pleaded guilty Monday to malicious mischief in the latest incident.
Travis Spoor, 39, could face up to two years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 under the plea agreement reached in St. Joseph County, according to The South Bend Tribune. As part of the agreement, a second count against him was dropped.
Spoor allegedly met women online and then later had sex with them without divulging his HIV status, the Associated Press reports.
It wasn’t the first time he’s been caught deceiving unwitting women. In October 2016, Spoor was charged with two counts of malicious mischief in Marshall County and was sentenced to serve two concurrent 18-month prison sentences followed by 18 months of probation under the plea deal he reached in that case.
He is still serving the home detention portion of his sentence in that case. He was arrested again in Allen County in July 2017 and given a one-year prison sentence after reaching another plea agreement.
A judge in St. Joseph County will decide his latest sentence in March.
Jeff Markley, executive director of the HIV advocacy group the Positive Resource Center, told WANE one reason that the sentence may not be as long as some people would think is that the disease is better managed today.
“If the virus had been transmitted to someone else back in the mid to late 80s, that risk of them dying from the disease would be much higher than it would be today,” he said.
But regardless of the advances in treatment, he said it would still be scary for a sexual partner to discover someone had failed to divulge the information to them.
“It would be a shock to somebody or concern even if they had sex and the disease didn’t get transmitted,” he said. “Just to know that the potential risk was there. That could be very traumatic.”
[Photo: Kosciusko County Sheriff's Department]
