30 Jan Gareth Thomas didn’t tell me he had HIV? Why?
Seven months into his relationship with the Welsh rugby star, Ian Baum found that he, too, was HIV positive. He still feels betrayed, he tells Matt Dickinson.
Ian Baum says that he can clearly recall the morning when he was cleaning up the bedroom he shared with Gareth Thomas and saw a pill on the floor. There was writing on it.
Look, you have got the virus. I was a complete wreck. I hadn’t come across it, never known anyone with the virus.
His curiosity sparked, Baum says, he took the pill downstairs where a friend, Nikki, was on her laptop and he asked her to type the letters into Google. Up on the screen came an antiretroviral medicine for carriers of HIV. Baum was dumbstruck—but much worse was to follow.
Within hours, Baum alleges, he had visited a health clinic, taken an HIV test, and been informed that he had tested positive. “This doctor took me to a side room to say, ‘Look, you have got the virus.’ I was a complete wreck. I hadn’t come across it, never known anyone with the virus.” His first thought: “Is this a death sentence?”
It was a day, he says, that would lead to contemplation of suicide, statements to police and a High Court claim against Thomas, the former Wales rugby legend, for “deceptively” infecting him with HIV.
This week, Thomas, 48, settled out of court with a payment to his former partner of £75,000 while also picking up the legal costs, which, for Baum alone, amount to about £150,000. Thomas has made no admission of liability and denies that he infected his former partner.
Read more here: The Times