I’m going to start off by saying that if anyone has had sexual relations with Allen J. Moore, the man in the orange jumpsuit pictured at left, please, please go to your doctor or Nebraska AIDS Project for an HIV test.That said, I’ll now tell you why. It’s a sad, infuriating, horrible story, indeed.
Moore, 48, enjoys having sex with high-school boys, and he does not disclose that he is HIV positive. Although it went unreported in the local news until today’s Omaha World-Herald, where it made the front page, this story came to light in May, when a 17-year-old boy who had engaged in consensual, unprotected sex with Moore told his story to an Omaha police officer at his high school. The boy told the police officer that he had contracted HIV and gonorrhea from Moore and that Moore had not informed him that he was HIV positive.
Omaha police decided to question Moore and went to his home. Moore answered the door naked. During questioning, a 16-year-old boy entered the room from the bedroom. Understand that Nebraska’s age of consent for sex is 16, so Moore did not commit statutory rape. However, when the police detective asked the boy, “Did he tell you he was HIV positive?” the boy said that Moore had not. (So far, the boy has tested negative for HIV.)
Police then arrested Moore. But for what? Unlike 31 other states, Nebraska does not have a law that requires HIV-positive people to inform sexual partners that they have the virus.
Moore claims that he was molested as a child, and he admitted to police that he has been attracted to children. He also told authorities that he contracted HIV in 2004, he has had numerous sexual partners — both male and female — and he has been a prostitute. He also told police that he discloses his HIV status to “lovers,” but not to one-night-stands, although he claims he always uses protection with one-night-stands.
However, both the 17- and 16-year-old boys told police that Moore never disclosed his HIV status to them, and they said that Moore has had sex with other teenagers. Moore met the 17-year-old boy online, another reason for parents to monitor teens’ Internet use.
I have reported on HIV in Nebraska for more than a decade, and I’ve had several friends with HIV and AIDS. A good friend of mine died of an AIDs-related infection in 2002. My best friend died of AIDS-related pneumonia in 2003. I have volunteered at the Nebraska AIDS Project, and I remain an HIV/AIDS advocate. I have met dozens of amazing people through my work with NAP, and none of them would ever consider intentionally passing on the virus to anyone else. Perhaps that is why I find Moore’s actions so infuriating.What is just as infuriating is Nebraska’s failure to enact a law that would allow authorities to take action against Moore for intentionally infecting the 17-year-old with HIV. Do our lawmakers in this state really have their heads so deep in the sand that they don’t believe HIV is affecting Nebraskans? Did they honestly believe that something like this couldn’t happen here? Are they too busy talking about their precious Huskers to take notice that HIV is alive and spreading in Nebraska, just as everywhere else in the world?
Moore preys on high-school boys. This also renews my anger that the Omaha Public School District enforces an abstinence-only sex education policy. Sex ed teachers cannot discuss safe sex with students. No, they are forced to follow the insane, inane thinking that if you tell kids not to have sex, then they won’t. Combine this with the decline in HIV education over the last decade, and you have a recipe for disaster.
OPS believes it is properly educating teens about sex and HIV, though. I have a friend with AIDS who speaks at area schools. However, even at these events, she is required to discuss abstinence-only prevention in the OPS district. She is not allowed to discuss safe sex practices.
Teenagers are having sex, and they’re having it at younger ages. Perhaps if the 17-year-old with whom Moore had sex had been informed about condoms and safe sex and the risk of HIV, he wouldn’t be living with HIV right now. When is this state going to realize that by failing to educate and inform teenagers, they are putting them in grave danger?
Parents aren’t doing their part in teaching pre-teens and teens about safe sex, and yes, I do believe it is the school’s responsibility. Most teen relationships begin in school, so to me, that makes sex education the school’s business. If parents refuse to teach their children, then someone must. These kids have a right to know the dangers and the ways to protect themselves. Their lives depend on it.School districts and morons like Sarah Palin demonstrate utter disregard for teens’ lives when they preach abstinence only. You’d think Palin would have learned this lesson when her unmarried 17-year-old daughter got pregnant. But no, she was still on the campaign trail preaching abstinence-only education. What if her daughter had contracted HIV? Would she still be so bullheaded in preaching her outlandish abstinence-only agenda?
Furthermore, Nebraska’s lack of legislation requiring HIV positive people to inform sexual partners of their status reveals how people become lost in believing that this is America’s Heartland. It’s the Heartland! We don’t have to worry about HIV or AIDS. That only happens in the big, bad, ugly cities far away from here. And that again is dangerous, potentially deadly thinking.
States with legislation requiring people to divulge their HIV-positive status don’t use the law very often. The majority of people with HIV are responsible. Sharon Renter, executive director of NAP, told the Omaha World-Herald that she fears such legislation would prevent people from getting tested for HIV. She said the stigma still attached to HIV/AIDS is difficult enough and that such legislation would only increase that stigma.
I strongly disagree. People like Moore must be stopped. Although HIV/AIDS is no longer a death sentence because pharmaceuticals have greatly improved over the last decade, people living with HIV still have reduced life spans. Furthermore, it’s not like you can just pop a pill and feel great. You might have to pop 30 pills a day, and the side effects from HIV drugs are often grueling and wear on the body. And because of the need for a continual flow of new drugs — people become resistant to a drug and must switch to a new one in its place, some strains of HIV are resistant to the current drugs, and some people need to try new drugs because the side effects from their current drugs are severe — the FDA approves HIV drugs quickly, and doctors and researchers don’t know the long-term effects of many of the drugs.
Moreover, HIV drug therapy is outrageously expensive, to the tune of upwards of $400,000 a year for a three-drug cocktail. That doesn’t include doctor’s appointments, either. This poses an enormous problem for people who don’t have health insurance. Without a doctor’s care and HIV drugs, their HIV can rapidly accelerate to AIDS, at which point they cannot work. Then they qualify for Social Security/disability and Medicaid, so they can finally get the proper treatments. However, if they stop taking HIV drugs they risk opportunistic infections and drug resistance. So now you have a group of people who can’t work if they want to stay healthy. I’ve talked to many, many people living with HIV who are in this situation. They want to work. But they can’t in order to stay healthy.If Renter thinks it’s OK for someone to intentionally inflict this future on another person, then she has no business representing NAP. Has she learned nothing from the people with whom she interacts on a daily basis?
HIV legislation doesn’t make it a crime to have HIV or to have sex if you have HIV. It doesn’t affect people who don’t know they have HIV and unknowingly infect another person. It simply makes it a crime not to tell sexual partners that you have HIV when you know you have the virus. And to me, that seems perfectly fair.
Moore’s story isn’t over yet. Police searched for something to charge him with in the case of the 17-year-old-boy to whom Moore had knowingly transmitted HIV. They found it when they searched Moore’s home and found a videotape of a sexual encounter that included Moore, the 17-year-old and another teen. Because it is illegal to make sex tapes of children under 18, police were able to arrest him and charge him with visual depiction of a minor engaged in a sex act, a felony.
Moore pleaded no contest to the charge, and his sentencing was scheduled for last week. However, when informed at his sentencing that he would be required to register as a sex offender, Moore told the court that wasn’t part of his deal, said he was not advised that he would have to register as a sex offender, and declared that he would never agree to register as a sex offender. Moore’s sentencing is currently delayed so the court can review transcripts from a previous hearing.
