An English court on Thursday convicted 43-year-old Adam Hall of deliberately inflicting grievous bodily harm by transmitting HIV to five young men, a 15-year-old boy, and a 17-year-old boy, and of raping four of those individuals. Hall will now serve a 23-year minimum of a life-long prison sentence.

During the four-month trial, which began in November and ended in March, police officers described Hall as an “arrogant and dismissive,” “callous, calculating sexual predator” who was diagnosed with HIV in 2010 but showed no remorse targeting younger, sexually inexperienced men he met in bars or on Grindr from 2016 to 2023, The Guardian reported.

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“He actually suggested that some of the victims wanted him to pass HIV on to them, which absolutely was not the case,” said Northumbria police officer Emma Smith, who interviewed Hall and testified at his trial. His victims only discovered his HIV status after learning on their own that they had been infected.

Prosecutors said Hall conducted a “campaign” to harm men across the United Kingdom, including in County Durham, Middlesbrough, North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Manchester, and London, PinkNews reported. Legal authorities are also convinced that Hall may have harmed other victims and are asking them to speak out so that he may continue to be held accountable.

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One of Hall’s rape victims, a 15-year-old, told the BBC that Hall met him through a dating app and never told him about his HIV status or his lack of medication treatment to keep the virus untransmittable.

“Why?” the victim said, “What was the reason? What possessed you to do what you did? Not just to me, but to everyone else that you’ve done it to, what did you gain out of it?”

Another victim said, “The whole thing is so unfair, he knew he was infected, and he thought he could get away with infecting me, that he was immune from any consequences. He didn’t even give me the option to take any pre- or post-HIV exposure treatment.”

The victim said some of his closest friends stopped inviting him to their houses after he was diagnosed with HIV. Another said that their own family now fears them for having the virus, even though it’s not easily transmitted without sexual intercourse.

Another victim said that Hall raped him when he was asleep, and yet another victim said that, because of Hall, he has been “left a shell of who I was” and forced to take HIV suppression medications for the rest of his life.

Overall, the victims said that Hall had “violated” them, leaving them with lifelong conditions and trauma, the BBC reported. Judge Edward Bindloss said Hall had been “selfish” and taken his victims’ futures away.

Jurors deliberated for almost 43 hours before deciding to convict Hall.

Police said Hall’s conviction marks the second time that someone has been convicted for intentional transmission of HIV in England. The law requires prosecutors to prove that the defendant knew they had HIV, didn’t disclose it, and deliberately transmitted it. The law gives convicted people a maximum prison sentence of five years for each person they were found guilty of infecting, according to the Terrence Higgins Trust.

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