A York judge has called for the law to be changed to catch people who recklessly infect sexual partners with life-threatening diseases.

Judge Jonathan Crabtree spoke out after he was forced to acquit a 25-year-old man accused of giving hepatitis B by unprotected sex to his girlfriend as she was carrying his child.

Both became infected with the potentially deadly disease and he was subsequently charged with causing her grievous bodily harm in 1995 and 1996.

At one stage he pleaded guilty to causing her actual bodily harm, but the Lord Chief Justice had allowed him to change his plea.

At York Crown Court, Judge Crabtree decreed the man, who can only be identified as "R", had not committed a crime.

"I am belaboured by the law and my hands are tied," he said. "I am now faced with a request for a ruling which, in my view, raises an unhappy situation in which part of the English law can and has been criticised."

Speaking to the Evening Press today, Judge Crabtree backed the proposals to make deliberate infection by sex an offence.

He said: "It is not an easy thing to legislate. It ought to be an offence (deliberate transmission of serious diseases) but there is a problem just how do you define which diseases?

"There are very definite problems and that is why the Government proposals have so far been very guarded."

Judge Crabtree said the Government was clearly "afraid" that if it did create some kind of offence for transmitting sexual diseases people could be reluctant to take tests.

But he was adamant some legislation was needed. The Home Office, which is drawing up new laws on offences against the person, was already interested in the case, he added. "In my own view they ought to introduce an offence of reckless transmission of disease. It is a matter for the politicians."

The Home Office said today it was not intending to make reckless sexual infection a crime. But it was proposing to make deliberate infection by sex an offence and it was studying the York case.

"R's" girlfriend was 16 when she had unprotected sex with him. She and the baby have now been declared free of the disease.

She was too upset after the case to talk about the decision to acquit her lover.

Both she and "R" come from the Newcastle area.

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