A known sex offender who served time for raping and beating a teenage girl is now accused of exposing six women in three weeks to the HIV virus. The twist: He had been trolling Internet chat rooms for companionship and met the women by way of the World Wide Web.
Marvin C. Nowell, 36, could face a charge of assault with a deadly weapon for allegedly telling a Texas woman he was HIV positive after they had had unprotected sex, APBNews.com says, adding it was "a scenario authorities say he repeated with five other women in Kentucky." Nowell is now in custody with the U.S. Marshal's Service in La Grange, Kentucky and awaiting extradition to Texas.
Authorities in both states want to know whether Nowell had encounters with more women. "We need to get the word out. We think there's a bona fide law enforcement and public safety issue that needs to be addressed," Tom Vinger, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), tells APBNews. "He's aware that he has HIV. ... Obviously we can't see what's in his head or in his heart, but based on the evidence we've gathered, it looks like he is intentionally trying to inflict this on people."
He says it's too early to tell if any of the six have been infected with the virus.
In a similar case, a New York man, Nushawn Williams, is serving 4-12 years in state prison there for pleading guilty to statutory rape and reckless endangerment, after prosecutors accused him of infecting at least thirteen women with HIV by way of unprotected sex.
Nowell served ten years of a thirty-year sentence in Texas for a 1986 rape and beating of a 15-year-old girl. He fled Texas in mid-December, APBNews says, after a warrant for his arrest was issued at the beginning of the month for parole violation. The current charge plus his prior rape conviction could mean life behind bars for him if he's convicted, the news service says.
The American Civil Liberties Union says it's a crime in 29 states to deliberately expose another person to HIV, but it can be called an assault anywhere. The ACLU opposes HIV-specific laws, saying in 1998 they keep people hiding rather than receiving testing, counseling and treatment.
