• He infected his partners with HIV, the prosecutor asked for a life sentence for Talluto
  • Valentino Talluto: the HIV-positive painter sent back for trial, risks 20 years

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27 October 2017The judges of the Third Court of Assizes in Rome have entered the council chamber and will have to issue the sentence in the trial that sees Valentino Talluto, the thirty-year-old accused of a malicious epidemic and very serious injuries for having infected 32 people with HIV which many of its former partners. For the defendant, the prosecutor asked for a life sentence.

57 episodes related to as many people are attributed to Talluto. It refers to about thirty women that the man would have infected with sexual relations and among the victims there are nurses, babysitters, shop assistants, all between the ages of twenty and thirty. They are joined by three men infected by women who became HIV positive because of sex with him, and a child born of one of his former HIV-positive partners. The baby has contracted the virus from its mother during childbirth and is now suffering from HIV and encephalopathy. To these are added a score of women who escaped the infection, including one who was pregnant at the time of sexual relations with Talluto, and three men who did not contract the virus despite having had 'threesomes' with him and his partner. That of Valentino Talluto was "lightness" and "stupidity" but "he did not want to spread the virus" and, in any case "his fine sentence has never already had it because he will remain for all 'the adept'", stress Maurizio Barca and Tiziana De Biase, lawyers of the 32 year old. He is "the author of a social massacre, caused by a brutal recklessness in which he was absolutely aware that with unprotected relations he would have infected his partners", says Irma Conti, defender of a civil party, according to whom the defendant struck its victims with "diabolical programming, infecting them and knowing very well the way to transmit the virus, how to avoid it, and knowing its harmful effect".

None of them knew how much he risked because no man trusted to be HIV-positive. He asked everyone not to use a condom, to have more pleasure during intercourse, and many satisfied him. The facts examined by the judicial police of the Rome court took place between 2006, when the man knew he was HIV-positive after taking an HIV test, and 2015. After being sure of being HIV positive, Talluto continued to having relationships, occasional or not, always without protections. The investigation started from the complaint of one of the victims, who after hearing from some friends in common that the man was HIV-positive, pressed him asking to know the truth.