Charlie Sheen: Actor could face multiple law suits after revealing he is HIV positive
The actor’s former girlfriend Rachel Oberlin claimed that he had never informed her of his diagnosis
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Your support makes all the difference.Charlie Sheen could face lawsuits from at least five of his former sexual partners after revealing this week that he is HIV positive. Five women, who allegedly had sex with Mr Sheen after his diagnosis, have reportedly hired lawyers, claiming that he never informed them of his condition.
In an interview with NBC’s Today programme on 1 November, the 50-year-old actor said that in the four years since his diagnosis, he had always approached sexual encounters with a policy of “condoms and honesty”, insisting he informed all his sexual partners of his HIV-positive status prior to intercourse. He added that it was “impossible” for him to have transmitted the virus to anyone.
Yet according to a report by the New York Daily News, a California lawyer this week claimed to have been contacted by multiple women, including adult film stars and escorts, who say the Wall Street star never told them about his diagnosis before they had sex with him. They are now considering suing Mr Sheen for intentional infliction of emotional distress, fraud and negligent transmission of a sexually transmitted disease, the lawyer said.
In an interview with Inside Edition following Mr Sheen’s televised announcement, the actor’s former girlfriend Rachel Oberlin, an adult film star better known as Bree Olson, claimed that he had never informed her of his diagnosis, which she had learned about only via the media this week. Ms Oberlin and Mr Sheen lived together for several months in 2011, shortly before he received his diagnosis.
Calling the actor “a monster”, Ms Oberlin said: “I could be dead right now. I could literally be dead right now because he did not tell me that!” The 29-year-old, who was tested this week and is not HIV positive, added: “I would never do to anyone what Charlie did to me. That is giving someone a possible death sentence. I would never do that to someone, ever.”
Mr Sheen said he had told those he trusted about his HIV status, including his ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller. But, he said, he had also been forced to spend millions of dollars to prevent the news from becoming public, after being subjected to “a deluge of blackmail and extortion” from people who knew the truth and threatened to reveal it.
In recent years, the actor has asked guests at his home to sign a non-disclosure agreement. The document, obtained by InTouch magazine, obliges individuals who break the agreement to pay Mr Sheen $100,000 (£66,000) plus a share of any payment they receive for disclosing the information.
Mr Sheen’s doctor, Robert Huizinga, who appeared alongside him on Today, said the actor currently has an “undetectable level of the [HIV] virus in his blood” thanks to his daily cocktail of four antiretroviral pills. He described the risk of Mr Sheen transmitting the infection to his sexual partners as “incredibly low”.
“Individuals who are optimally treated, who have undetectable viral loads, who responsibly use protection – it's incredibly low,” Dr Huizenga said. “It’s incredibly rare to transmit the virus. We can’t say that that’s zero, but it’s a very, very low number.”
In California, having unprotected sex with the intent of infecting an unsuspecting partner with HIV is a felony punishable with a prison sentence of up to eight years. The lesser misdemeanour of wilfully exposing someone to HIV carries a sentence of several months.