In a series of crimes that can best be described as despicable, an HIV-positive British-born man, Christer Merrill Aggett, 32, who had lived in Sweden since early childhood, allegedly kept a diary of his voluminous sexual encounters with young girls, many of them underage. By the time he was stopped by the police, Aggett had purportedly had sex with as many as 130 underage girls in Sweden.
According to the police and reports by the BBC, Aggett’s potentially deadly sexual habits surfaced when his landlord discovered photos of him performing various sexual acts with young, underage girls. HIV medications were also found inside his apartment.
Apparently Aggett’s objective was to find young girls, some as young as 12, by visiting Internet chat rooms between 2001 and 2006. He frequently used the handle, Hot Boy. A police raid on his apartment turned up the diary which contained the names of at least 130 young women and underage girls with whom he may have had unprotected sex.
Two of the girls, who are now 17- and 21-years-old, have tested positive to HIV, and police are still in the process of attempting to track down all of the 130 or so females named in his diary. So far they have found 10 of them, each of whom are awaiting test results. According to the prosecutor, Sara Lindqvist, the girls in question were all born between 1986 and 1990.
According to the Associated Press, Aggett was charged in October 2007 with two counts of aggravated assault for allegedly infecting two girls during unprotected sex. He purportedly did not tell his victims that he was HIV-positive. He was also charged with “exposing others to danger” by having sex with more than a dozen women between the years in question, six of whom were under the age of 15—Sweden’s legal age of consent—when the sexual encounters allegedly occurred.
Aggett confessed to most of the alleged crimes, but did not admit to having sex with underage girls—he claimed that he was not aware that they had been so young. In February 2008, Aggett was convicted of infecting two young women with HIV and placing at least 13 additional women at risk of infection. He was also convicted of six counts of having sex with minors, and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He was also ordered to pay more than the Swedish equivalent of $428,000 in damages, much of which will go to the two HIV-infected women, if the money is ever collected. Aggett’s attorney said that his client will likely appeal the convictions.
