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Latisha Patwardhan enters court at the Matheson Courthouse in Salt Lake City during her preliminary hearing on prostitution charges March 13. The charges were enhanced because she is HIV-positive.
Latisha Patwardhan's latest prostitution bust raises a troubling question: How long was she working while HIV-positive?
Although state laws require testing for anyone who buys or sells sex, the answer isn't clear.
Patwardhan first was convicted of sexual solicitation in 2002, just months after her 18th birthday. She was diagnosed as HIV-positive in 2007 through a screening ordered after her fourth solicitation bust - five years and three convictions after her only other test on record.
Now the 23-year-old is awaiting sentencing for her sixth conviction - one of just two prosecutions statewide for soliciting with HIV in the past five years.
The rarity of such cases may have to do with the rarity of the crime. But a review of court records and procedures shows inconsistencies in execution, record-keeping and communication among criminal justice and health agencies charged with enforcing Utah's stringent laws on prostitution and HIV.
Falling through the cracks
Public health departments have committed substantial resources to conducting court-ordered HIV tests since 1993, when state law made them mandatory for all convicted sex workers and johns.
"We almost need a full-time person to do this and make sure people don't fall through the cracks," said Lynn Beltran, STD and HIV program manager for the Salt Lake Valley Health Department. "Last month, we ended up doing about 20 . . . and I'm quite sure there are way more at times."
Beltran estimated solicitation is in the background of one-fifth to one-fourth of those who account for new HIV cases in recent years. There were 97 last year in Salt Lake County.
Salt Lake City police, who handle most of the county's solicitation cases, have a total of 14 positive results on file for past offenders.
In many cases, it is not clear whether the test is ordered at all. In nearly 40 percent of solicitation and prostitution convictions handled in state courts in 2006 and 2007, there is no record of HIV tests being ordered, read by a judge, or filed, court dockets and case files indicate.
Among those cases are two solicitation convictions Patwardhan incurred before the 2007 case where a HIV test was ordered - one in 2004 and one in 2006. Patwardhan declined to comment.
"I don't know if it necessarily is always implemented," said Salt Lake City prosecutor Sim Gill.
More diligence is needed
When a test is administered, the fate of the result is not always clear. Vice officers in the Salt Lake City Police Department say they receive the results from prosecutors and file them to screen for future cases. However, a vice sergeant said he noticed last year that the department had received no HIV test results for three years.
"I called the prosecutor's office, and a week later we got a notification," said the sergeant, who asked that The Tribune not name him because he is involved in undercover operations.
The result the sergeant received was Patwardhan's.
Gill said he believed police agencies were collecting results independently from the courts but added his office in recent weeks began to keep a databank of positive HIV results for their own reference. There has been one positive result since the office began collecting data in mid-March.
"We need to be much more diligent on it," Gill said.
Even when the results make their way to the police department, other factors stand in the way of their use in future cases. Aliases are common among sex trade offenders - typically transients whose lives seldom require them to commit to an identity, the sergeant said.
"We have some prostitutes with 10 different names," he said.
Also, a positive HIV result stays within whichever police department handled that case. If an offender leaves that jurisdiction and is arrested elsewhere, there is no way to know about or access that record, the sergeant said.
"There's a breakdown in making sure there is a centralized database [by] which law enforcement can gather that information," Gill said.
Treating vs. punishing
Ultimately, Beltran said, HIV-enhanced prosecutions are most effective not because they necessarily deter infected offenders, but because the law requires HIV counseling and drug treatment for felony prostitution convictions.
While offenders receive a half-hour session on HIV prevention at the time of their tests, and while rehab may be ordered in any prostitution or solicitation case, offenders typically need more intensive help to reverse whatever led them to perform sex acts for $20.
"There is a strong intersection with drug addiction . . . mental health issues, a lack of other options, a lack of skills. A lot of the research shows a lot of the women have had their sexual boundaries violated at some point, usually during childhood," Beltran said. "We don't have the funding to . . . enroll that person in a lengthy program."
The irony, Gill said, is that the cost of treating most prostitution and solicitation offenders is less than the cost of punishing them.
"We're talking about a criminal justice response to what is otherwise a public health issue," he said. "Where we introduce a nonjudicial intervention, we're going to be dollar-for-dollar much farther ahead."
* State law requires anyone convicted of prostitution, patronizing a prostitute, or sexual solicitation to submit to a mandatory HIV test prior to sentencing.
* Utah is one of six states where penalties for solicitation and prostitution increase if the offender previously tested positive for HIV, according to a 2002 study funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.