Woman sues ex-partner for contracting herpes

Posted on | August 16, 2007 | 4 Comments

Cheryl-Ann Pollock said she believed her boyfriend when he told her that the sexually transmitted disease he had was in remission and could not be spread.

It was not until a few weeks after he ditched her for his ex-girlfriend that she decided to ask her doctor about it, just to be sure. Her doctor confirmed Pollock’s worst fears: Despite what her boyfriend had told her, she said he had given her herpes.

Last week, Pollock, 49, of Long Beach, filed a lawsuit against her ex in Nassau Supreme Court, charging that the disease he gave her will make it difficult ever to be intimate with a man again.

“He took away the most precious thing I had — the ability to love and be loved,” she said.

Pollock’s ex-boyfriend could not be reached for comment.

People have sued their sexual partners for giving them sexually transmitted diseases before, said Pollock’s lawyer, Scott Cohen of Carle Place. Such lawsuits are more common with HIV and AIDS, but several suits have been filed in the past few years over non-fatal diseases like herpes, he said.

When Pollock, who is divorced and has two grown children, met her boyfriend in September 2006, she said she thought her dream of finding a life partner had come true.

About two months into the relationship, she said he told her he’d had genital herpes — an incurable virus marked by periodic outbreaks of sores on the genitals — for the past 12 years. But she said he told her not to worry: The disease could only be spread during an outbreak, and he had not had one of those in six years.

Pollock said she didn’t panic then. She loved this man and respected him, and felt confident that he knew the details of his own condition. The two continued to have unprotected sex, she said.

It was not until March, shortly after the man ended their relationship, that Pollock decided to ask her doctor, she said.

“I was outraged,” she said, weeping. “Because some selfish guy didn’t give me the facts, I have to have this for the rest of my life. … My broken heart will mend. This will stay forever.”

Genital herpes affects as many as one in five people, according to Centers for Disease Control statistics. Still, she said she feels that it has ended her dating life, at least for now. The one man she has dated since then got up and walked out of a restaurant when she told him she had the disease, she said.

Pollock, who does not have health insurance, said the unspecified damages that she’s suing for is only part of the reason she has filed the lawsuit. Mostly, she said she wants to warn others that this could happen to them.

“Human kindness would have indicated that he should have stepped up to the plate, told her the facts and said, ‘Do you want to continue the relationship?’” Cohen said. “He breached that duty.”

My Thoughts: She should sue his doctor for misinforming him! If more people would hold the medical community accountable for the misinformation they are giving their patients, perhaps more people would be able to inform partners better.

source

Popularity: 3% [?]

Comments