COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — An Ohio woman who served prison time for allegedly failing to disclose her HIV status to her ex-fiancé is sharing her story as part of an effort calling for the modernization of state laws criminalizing HIV.

Equality Ohio and the Ohio Health Modernization Movement released an update in late February to their report outlining six state laws that yielded at least 214 HIV-related criminal prosecutions from 2014 to 2020. The revamped report features interviews with Ohioans who have been impacted by these laws, to “highlight the human cost of outdated laws and the necessity for policies that reflect current scientific knowledge about HIV transmission.”

One interview details the story of Kelley Bean, an Akron woman who was arrested in 2010 and charged with felonious assault for failure to disclose her HIV status to her ex-fiancé. While Bean asserts that the accusation is untrue, she went on to serve five years in prison before being released in 2018.

Despite her charge being centered on her HIV status, Bean claims that the prison didn’t test her for HIV during the first five months of her incarceration. In the report, she recalls when officers made discriminatory comments about her, including statements like, “This is the infected one,” and “Make sure you put gloves on when you take the cuffs off.”

“People would say stuff like they didn’t want to use the toilet or the shower right after me,” Bean said. “People wouldn’t even want to or try to help me when I’d get injured or need help with anything.”

Seventy-seven of the more than 200 HIV-related prosecutions were litigated under the same felonious assault charge Bean faced, penalizing those with HIV for engaging in sexual conduct without divulging their medical history. More than half, 120 cases, charged the defendants for exposing others to their bodily fluid, like by spitting or biting.

All 214 charges originate under six Ohio laws that were passed to reduce transmission and end the AIDS epidemic. However, the statutes have not been reviewed by the legislature since the 1990s and are “outdated” given they do not reflect current scientific understanding of HIV, the report argues.

That’s why former Ohio House Rep. Sara Carruthers (R-Hamilton) introduced a bill last fall to repeal Ohio’s revised code penalizing individuals with HIV who attempt to donate blood, and another bill altering the five other HIV laws. However, both proposals only received one hearing. Watch a previous NBC4 report on Carruthers’ bills in the video player above.

More than 30 years of HIV research and biomedical advancements to treat and prevent transmission show that the laws “are now outdated and do not reflect our current understanding of HIV,” Carruthers said. Instead, these laws “have been shown to increase stigma, exacerbate disparities, and may discourage HIV testing.”

“[Both bills] would remove stigmatizing and inaccurate language from several laws and would provide protections against non-consensual HIV testing and HIV information disclosure,” Carruthers said. The lawmaker told NBC4 at the time she was looking for a representative to continue advocating for the bills after her term ended last year. Since the new General Assembly began in January, similar bills have not been introduced.

Carruthers’ claims are backed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which states HIV is not spread through saliva or unbroken skin and there are no documented cases of the virus spreading through spitting. Those living with HIV also cannot pass the virus through sex when they have reached an undetectable level of HIV in their blood, achieved through medication estimated to be 100% effective. 

The remaining 17 cases from 2014 to 2020 were related to sex work, under solicitation and prostitution laws that can penalize HIV-positive Ohioans for activities that don’t lead to the transmission of the virus.

Most recently, a Marietta sex worker was charged with engaging in solicitation after a positive HIV test, leading police to issue a public health notice. The woman was indicted in Washington County for allegedly engaging in sex acts with at least 211 individuals from early 2022 through May of last year.

Equality Ohio and OHMM’s report also told the story of a transgender woman under the pseudonym Anna, who was arrested in Cleveland in 1998 by an undercover detective for solicitation. The report says that Anna’s charge traditionally would’ve been a misdemeanor, but because she confessed to being HIV positive it was elevated to a felony.

“Once they find out that you have that disease, they try to put it to the forefront,” she said. “That’s all they want to talk about is your status. … They don’t really want to talk about the charge; they want to talk about your status.”

Anna took a plea deal and was sentenced to 18 months in a men’s prison, during which she didn’t receive trans healthcare known as gender-affirming care, the report states. After her incarceration, she was required to register as a sex offender for 10 years, which she said prevented her from getting a stable job.

Read more from Bean’s and Anna’s stories, in addition to a third interview with an Ohio man who lived with HIV for more than 42 years, in the report below.