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April 16th, 2013 
A man accused of giving his girlfriend HIV says he thought condoms only prevented pregnancy.
Source: AAP
A CIRCUS acrobat accused of intentionally giving his girlfriend HIV says he thought condoms only prevented pregnancy and he didn’t know the virus could spread through sex, a Gold Coast court has heard.
Despite being first diagnosed in 1998, Geoffrey Zaburoni, 34, told police in a 2010 interview played on the second day of his trial at Southport District Court that it wasn’t until he attended a sexual health clinic in 2009 that he was made aware HIV could be spread through sexual intercourse.
Zaburoni is charged with deliberately infecting a former girlfriend with the virus and could face 14 years in jail if found guilty.
The Zimbabwe-born circus performer was interviewed three times by police in May 2010, saying he kept taking blood tests in the hope his HIV would disappear.
“I thought it was from needles, cuts or blood transfers,” Zaburoni said.
“I didn’t know it would happen to people like this.”
Zaburoni said he suspected he had given his girlfriend the virus when she told him she had tested positive six months after their relationship ended in September 2008.
In the near two-year relationship, Zaburoni told police he and the woman had unprotected sex only twice and denied her claims he had told her he found sex without a condom more pleasurable.
Zaburoni, who told police he had never attended high school, said he had been unaware condoms were used to control sexually transmitted diseases at the time of their relationship.
In his third interview with police, Zaburoni admitted to faking a blood test for immigration purposes in 2005.
He told police he asked a friend to take the test for him so his HIV status wouldn’t be revealed, fearing a positive result would have seen him returned to Zimbabwe where he believed he might be killed.
“I was so afraid,” Zaburoni said.
“We both didn’t know it would put us in trouble or was a big thing.”
Zaburoni’s girlfriend called her situation “a nightmare” in a recorded phone conversation played in the court.
“I want to believe so much you didn’t purposely do this, Godfrey, but there’s too much there to say that you knew,” the woman, who cannot be identified, said.
In the police interviews, Zaburoni denied claims by the woman that they had regularly discussed whether he had HIV during their relationship.
The trial continues.
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