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HIV test brings another charge

Now charged with spreading HIV, he had been accused of sex with underage girls.

By SHEELA RAMAN
Published March 3, 2007

A Pinellas Park man already accused of having sex with two underage girls now faces a charge of infecting a woman with HIV, court records show.

Charles David Hadfield, 22, was arrested Wednesday after the 20-year-old woman tested positive for HIV that same day, police said.

Hadfield, who lives in the 5500 block of 65th Ave., is charged with one count of having sexual intercourse while HIV positive without informing and obtaining consent.

The arrest comes after Hadfield was charged in October with lewd and lascivious battery in two separate cases. He is accused of having sex with two underage girls, who both now have HIV.

Hadfield has not been charged with intentionally infecting those two girls. Both relationships date back several years, which makes it difficult to establish how they were infected.

The St. Petersburg Times is not identifying the victims because of the nature of the crimes.

Hadfield was released on $100,000 bail Thursday afternoon.

Assistant State Attorney Della Connolly had argued that Hadfield, who likely infected three individuals with HIV, is a danger to society and should not be out on the street pending the resolution of the cases.

Hadfield's attorney, Jay Hebert, countered by saying that his client is an otherwise respectable, employed 22-year-old man who does not know how he contracted the disease, and is essentially a victim himself.

Neither Hebert nor Pinellas Park police would disclose when Hadfield discovered he was infected with HIV.

"The defense is probably going to say he didn't know up until very recently, but I think we will be able to prove that he knew well before that," said Capt. Sanfield Forseth, a Pinellas Park police spokesman.

One of the girls who filed the October charges was 12 years old when she became sexually involved with Hadfield, who was then 16, police said. Their relationship lasted from 2000 to 2004.

In 2004, when he was 20, Hadfield became sexually involved with the other girl, who was 15 at the time. He stayed involved with her until 2006, police said.

Hadfield, who works as a bartender at Pass-a-Grill Yacht Club in St. Pete Beach, had been dating the 20-year-old woman since September, the woman's mother said in court Thursday.

When Hadfield was arrested in October, detectives interviewed her and her daughter.

Even so, the mother said she did not worry much about her daughter because Hadfield had convinced both of them that his ex-girlfriends were merely disgruntled and were making up the charges to spite him.

Up until her daughter tested positive this week, the woman had no idea Hadfield was infected, her mother said.

She said her daughter, who never gets sick, came down with flu-like symptoms in October, which persisted on and off into December. She took an HIV test in December, which came back negative, the mother said in court.

She also said her daughter asked Hadfield at the time whether he was HIV positive. He told her he wasn't, she said.

"I just want to get the word out about him, so he does not infect anyone else," the mother said after the hearing.

She looked at her daughter, who was standing next to her and appeared to be on the verge of tears.

"This is a horrible thing," she said.

[Last modified March 2, 2007, 23:11:41]