‘He played Russian roulette with my life’: Man jailed for infecting girlfriend with HIV

A Sydney man who refused to tell his girlfriend he had HIV but continued to have unprotected sex will spend at least three years behind bars.

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When Frank Xavier Navarro was diagnosed with HIV, social workers warned him for years about the dangers of unprotected sex.

Yet when he began a relationship with a Sydney mother-of-one, Navarro ignored the warnings and destroyed his girlfriend’s life.

“He had been educated and warned before he met me of the impact of HIV,” the woman said in a statement tendered to Sydney’s District Court.

“That didn’t stop him infecting me. His self-gratification has resulted in the quality of my life and everyone who loves me being diminished forever.”

Frank Xavier Navarro, 50, has been jailed for at least three years for knowingly infecting his former girlfriend with HIV in 2016.

Navarro was sentenced this month to five years and three months jail for knowingly infecting his former girlfriend, who can’t be identified, with the virus after they started dating in 2016.

In her emotional statement to court, she explained how she went from being a vivacious woman with a successful career to someone who looked in the mirror and saw a “sad, fragile and anxious” person staring back.

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She struggled with the stigma associated with HIV, the loss of a job she thrived in due to depression, the endless medical appointments and the impact on her mental wellbeing.

Court documents reveal how Navarro was diagnosed with the illness in 2003 but stopped “all forms of treatment” in 2015.

Social workers told Navarro at least three times that there were legal implications for having unprotected sex with someone.

But when he met the woman in mid-2016, he began having sex without a condom,

Later that year, the woman was ill, she felt run down and had ulcers inside her mouth that wouldn’t go away.

Navarro pretended that his HIV diagnosis was recent but in fact he was diagnosed in 2003.

When the woman spoke to Navarro about sexual transmitted disease testing, he lied and said he hadn’t been tested.

In early 2017, after claiming to undergo a sexual transmitted disease test, Navarro told the woman he had HIV but suggested it was only a recent diagnosis.

A month later, the woman was diagnosed as HIV positive.

In her victim impact statement, the woman, a mother-of-one, described learning the man she shared her life, home and femininity with, had betrayed her.

“I didn’t know that I was in love with a man playing Russian roulette with my life and my future,” she said.

“With my healthy body and my healthy mind.”

It wasn’t until the pair were undergoing counselling at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, that the woman suspected clinic staff knew more about Navarro’s diagnosis than he’d told her.

In early 2018, she discovered Navarro had been diagnosed with the virus 15 years prior.

When police arrested and questioned Navarro in March 2018, he compared not telling the truth about HIV to not disclosing a parking fine.

“I’ve told her … bits and pieces,” he said, according to court documents.

“I always said to her, I don’t want my problems to be her problems.

“Even stuff like, you know, my financial and stuff; it’s my doing. If I get a fine, a car fine, she doesn’t need to know about that.”

Navarro, who pleaded guilty to recklessly causing grievous bodily harm, will be eligible for parole in June 2021.

Originally published as ‘He played Russian roulette with my life’: Man jailed for infecting girlfriend with HIV