AUSTRALIAN police fear a Zimbabwean circus performer may have infected as many as 12 women with HIV.
Godfrey Zaburoni, 31, has been charged with acts intended to cause grievous bodily harm or transmit a serious disease after one of his sex partners “made a complaint in relation to her health,” Queensland Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Col McCallum told reporters in Brisbane on Tuesday.
Police say Zaburoni has worked as an acrobat in “quite a range of circuses” since he arrived in Australia from Zimbabwe in 1997.
Authorities say he has given them names of 12 women across the country that he had unprotected sex with, but much of the details were insufficient to help trace his alleged victims.
Queensland chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said seven of those women were in Queensland, with the rest in New South Wales and Victoria.
She urged any women who had had unprotected sex with Zaburoni to “come forward and be tested”.
Deputy Commissioner McCallum said Zaburoni, who has acquired Australian citizenship, has been HIV positive since 1997.
"We received a complaint from a female in relation to her health and we progressed the investigation from that," he said. "It is [an unusual case] - we've only had one before where a person was convicted for the offence."
McCallum said it was thought all the women who had come into sexual contact with Zaburoni were under 40.
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