Victims of Groningen HIV case demand damages

GRONINGEN—Fourteen HIV-infected victims are claiming damages amounting to one million euros against the three men convicted in the so-called Groningen HIV case. The civil law case will be heard on Wednesday.

Last November, Groningen district court handed down sentences of nine, five and one and a half years to three men charged with deliberately infecting a number of men with the virus at sex parties.

However, the judge said it could not be proven that the victims had developed HIV as a result of the injections, nor that there was sufficient evidence that they had been drugged before the assaults took place. The lawyer representing the victims is now demanding that the perpetrators prove the victims did not develop HIV from their injections. This reverse evidence approach is possible within a civil case procedure.

The victims’ lawyer has ordered the houses and bank accounts of the convicted men to be frozen.

Radio Netherlands/Expatica