Documentary film (45 min) tells the personal stories of four women living with HIV in Canada and their experiences with HIV disclosure, the criminal law, and stigma and discrimination.
Communications and media
Learning about the experience of survivors
These resources include interviews and testimony of people who have been tried for HIV exposure and transmission.
No Trial After All!
Details Louis Gay’s experience of HIV criminalisation on the day charges against him were dropped.
Survivors’ Testimony: HIV is not a Crime Conference
Includes testimony and advocacy of survivors of HIV criminalization prosecutions at the HIV Is Not A Crime conference, 2014.
Review an innocent soldier’s wrongful conviction
A person living with HIV tells the story of his wrongful HIV conviction.
HIV is Not a Crime
Introduces HIV criminalization through the experiences of three people who were prosecuted for HIV crimes.
- Alternative links
- HIV is Not a Crime - Spanish Subtitles
Testimony of Donald Bogardus, Kerry Thomas, Robert Suttle, Louis Gay, Mark Hunter, Monique Moree and Nick Rhoades
In individual videos, seven survivors of HIV criminalisation tell their compelling first-hand accounts of prosecution and incarcertion for HIV non-disclosure.
HIV Criminalization in Canada: Testimonials
Compiled from research interviews conducted by Alexander McClelland, as part of his doctoral research at Concordia University. In order to protect the confidentiality of research participants, these stories are composites and the names are pseudonyms.
Positive Women Revisited
In 2022, to mark the 10th anniversary of Positive Women, the HIV Legal Network went back to two of the protagonists featured in the original documentary to understand if and how criminalization was still part of their lives. Positive Women Revisited (2022) documents what it’s still like to live with the constant fear of prosecution, and why this needs to change for people living with HIV in Canada.
Science vs. Stigma: The Continued Criminalization of HIV
This article explores how state laws criminalizing potentially exposing someone to HIV have not kept pace with the science.
What It’s Like to Be HIV Positive in the Military
Soldiers can be prosecuted for having sex, latest medications aren’t widely available – are the armed forces living in the 1980s when it comes to AIDS?
Breastfeeding and HIV: An example of what stigma, discrimination and lack of information can cause.
This video reflects the story of a woman from Argentina who was prosecuted for wanting to breastfeed her baby and in the success of the defense of her rights with the accompaniment of ICW Argentina so that she could comply with the reproductive right of breastfeeding.
Document on criminalisation case on the risk of HIV transmission through exclusive breastfeeding
The purpose of this paper is to report on a recent case of HIV criminalisation that occurred in August 2022, in the province of San Luis, Argentina, where a woman with HIV was criminalised for accessing her right to choose how to exclusively breastfeed her baby.
Please note this is a DEEPL translation of the Spanish report.