Wellington - An immigrant to New Zealand who is HIV-positive injected his wife with his own blood while she slept, infecting her with the virus that causes Aids, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
The wife, 33, told police that he said, "I used needles on you because I wanted you to be the same as me so that you can live with me and you won't leave me," according to court documents reported by the Sunday Star-Times.
In the first case of its kind in New Zealand, the man, 35, admitted deliberately infecting his wife with a disease, and is in custody awaiting sentence next year. He faces a maximum 14 years in prison.
Their names have not been revealed.
The woman told the court that her husband twice pricked her with a sewing needle laced with his infected blood as she slept and she once caught him handling a syringe full of his blood.
She said they had been experiencing relationship problems, partly because she refused to have sex with him, fearing she would contract Aids.
The man discovered he was HIV-positive during health checks imposed on the family when they arrived in New Zealand in 2004. Tests showed his wife and their children did not have the virus.
The woman had tested negative for HIV at least four times before a year-long abstinence from sex, so police were certain she was infected by being pricked with the needle, the paper said.
She told the court: "I just wanted to maintain the relationship for the sake of the children. He insisted on staying and he mentioned that he was not worried about sex any more. All he wanted (was) to see the children grow with both parents under one roof."
Simon Harger-Forde, of the New Zealand Aids Foundation, told the paper, "We are deeply shocked and saddened by the deliberate and intentional nature of the HIV transmission that is reported to have occurred in this case." -
Sapa-dpa