Woman tells Sask trial that ex-CFLer Trevis Smith never told her he had HIV
Tim Cook, Canadian Press
Published: Thursday, February 01, 2007
REGINA (CP) - A second woman accusing a former Canadian Football League player of knowingly exposing her to HIV says he never told her he had the virus, even after he knew she planned to donate a kidney to her ailing father.
The 26-year-old British Columbia woman testified Wednesday that she only realized Trevis Smith was HIV-positive when she called an unknown number on her cellphone and was told about his infection by the woman who answered. "I didn't think someone could be so malicious," the well-spoken and confident-sounding woman told provincial court Judge Kenn Bellerose.
"I still don't understand till this day how someone rationalizes that."
Over the course of a four-year relationship, the woman testified that Smith had met her family, including her father, who was suffering from renal failure. She had even told him she planned to be a living organ donor so her dad could recover.
She said she has since tested negative for HIV and her father got her kidney last February.
Smith, 30, is charged with two counts of aggravated sexual assault for allegedly not informing his partners about his HIV-positive status before having unprotected sex.
Court has already heard how the married father of two learned he was infected in November 2003 and that police laid charges two years later, when the B.C. woman came forward.
She cannot be identified due to a publication ban.
The woman testified how she met Smith, then a linebacker for the Saskatchewan Roughriders, in the fall of 2001 at a nightclub in Vancouver.
The two soon struck up a long-distance relationship that would last until 2005.
The woman testified they talked on the phone almost every day, and visited each other in B.C. and Regina.
At first, they used protection during sex, she said, because she was aware professional athletes can sometimes "sleep around."
But early on, they both assured one another that neither had any infections and stopped taking precautions.
The woman testified how in August 2004 - about nine months after public health nurses told Smith he was HIV-positive - she travelled to Regina to surprise him on his birthday. But he wasn't himself during the visit.
While Smith was away at practice one day, she found a pamphlet called "Living with HIV" in one of his bags.
She panicked and hysterically called the number of the public health nurse who had attached her card to the cover. Public health told her they couldn't tell her anything about Smith, but rushed her in for an HIV test which came out negative, she said.
She said she didn't confront Smith about the pamphlet because she felt she had violated his privacy. Instead, she told him she went to get tested because she saw a picture of another woman in his house and was worried he was sleeping around.
In the days that followed, Smith explained that he was acting strangely because a woman in Regina was accusing him of giving her HIV. The police were involved and he had gotten a lawyer, but it wasn't true, she said he told her.
"I believed him because (if he) had it, I would have it," she said. "I don't have it; how does he have it?"
She said the two continued to have unprotected sex.
In the months that followed, they travelled together several times. During a Las Vegas trip in May 2005, Smith used her cellphone to text message some "friends," she said. But the woman testified it "just didn't seem right" and she called one of the numbers when she got back.
On the other end was a woman from Regina claiming to be Smith's girlfriend and telling her that he was HIV-positive.
"I cried," the B.C. woman recalled. "There was something in her tone that I just believed what she said."
But she testified she stayed in touch with Smith for several more months, repeatedly asking him when they talked if there was something he thought she should know.
"I wanted him to face me. I wanted him to tell me the truth."
Finally, when the Roughriders travelled to B.C. for a game in the fall of 2005, she met Smith at the team's hotel. While the two were in her car, she confronted him with what she knew.
"I cried and all he could say is . . . 'I'm sorry. I was scared.' "
She said he seemed worried she would go to police, which the evidence shows she had already done.
On cross-examination, Smith's lawyer Marie-Helene Giroux drew the woman's attention to a call she received from B.C. Health shortly after her August 2004 trip to Regina.
The woman said she was told on the call that she had been listed as a sexual contact of someone who had HIV, but the person did not give Smith's name.
She said she was tested again and was negative.
Giroux wondered why, with all the warning signs she received around that time, she continued to have unprotected sex with Smith.
"Didn't you have enough information ringing a bell that it could be sexually dangerous to sleep with him?" Giroux charged.
"He swore up and down he didn't have it," she responded. "It's maybe wrong of me for believing that someone would be honest."