The youngest victim of Adam Hall, a 43-year-old HIV predator from Washington, Tyne and Wear, was told he was HIV-positive in a phone call moments after stepping off a school bus. Hall was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 23 years and 42 days for five counts of rape and seven counts of causing grievous bodily harm by deliberately infecting younger partners with HIV.
Hall met his victims in Newcastle bars or on the dating app Grindr. His youngest victim was just 15 when they met, and received the devastating news at 16. 'I had just got off the school bus and was walking home when the phone rang,' the victim, now 22, told the BBC. 'Everything shatters, everything went numb. I was mortified, shattered at myself.'
The victim described the lifelong impact: daily medication with awful side effects, difficult conversations with future partners, fear of stigma, and constant health anxiety. 'Hall's disgustingly harmful actions, his lies and his deceitfulness has taken so much from me,' he said. Hall refused to appear in court for sentencing, remaining in his cell at HMP Durham, which victims saw as a final insult.
Four victims read personal statements in court, detailing struggles with addiction, job loss, and relationship difficulties. Hall is only the second person in the UK convicted of intentional HIV transmission, following Daryll Rowe in 2018. Hall was diagnosed with HIV in 2010 but stopped adhering to treatment from 2016, making him infectious, and had unprotected sex with men between 2016 and 2023, sometimes raping them.
