Man Gets Probation for Passing AIDS Virus : Court: He is also sentenced to 3,000 hours of community service for infecting the woman and the baby they conceived.

A former carpenter convicted of assault for passing the AIDS virus to a woman and the daughter they conceived was sentenced Friday to five years’ probation and 3,000 hours of community service.

Before sentencing David Scott Crother, 46, of Paso Robles as part of a plea agreement, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Lawrence Storch read some of the comments the infected woman made to a probation investigator.

“This is not an assault, it is murder,” said the unidentified woman, a Ventura County resident in her 20s. “All I wanted is someone to love me, and now I’m going to die for that. I don’t think I should have to die for that.”

The woman said she pressed charges against Crother because “I was tired of women being expendable receptacles for men. I made up my mind that I was not going to allow myself to be victimized by men. . . . My life and (the child’s) life is important and worth something, and we matter.”

The woman has tested positive for the virus that causes acquired immune deficiency syndrome, and her 2-year-old daughter--whom genetic testing showed is Crother’s child--has AIDS itself, attorneys said.

Crother agreed to be found guilty in an unusual legal move designed to speed his case to an appeals court, which will decide whether charges of assault with a deadly weapon apply to his conduct.

His sentence also included an order to pay $1,000 restitution for the victims’ medical costs.

“If he weren’t so ill, I might not give him probation,” Storch said before reading the woman’s statement. “I’ve been here a long time and I haven’t seen a more moving statement by a victim.”

Storch said he will review the public-service sentence--amounting to 12 hours a week for five years--if Crother’s health deteriorates too much for him to comply.

Crother probably will serve at the AIDS Support Network in San Luis Obispo, where he could do office work or give speeches about AIDS at schools, hospitals or radio stations, according to recommendations made by the probation officer.

Crother’s attorney, Robert Sanger, said he plans to file an appeal next week.

Over Sanger’s objections, Storch ordered the probation report left unsealed, saying it might help educate the public about AIDS.

The report describes a clandestine affair between an ill-informed AIDS-carrier and an unsuspecting woman who now fears she will die before her daughter.

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Crother told the probation officer that he probably contracted the AIDS virus during anonymous sexual encounters with men in a Santa Barbara adult bookstore where he worked 11 years ago, calling the practice “an addiction.” He also told the investigator he had had sex with prostitutes in Washington.

But after he tested positive for the virus in 1986 or 1987, Crother said, he did not realize the risk of infecting someone else. He said he wrongly believed it was very difficult to transmit through heterosexual intercourse.

The two--each married at the time--met in a Santa Barbara restaurant, and she pursued him, the report said. They had more than a dozen sexual encounters in hotels and at Crother’s house in Goleta, it said.

Crother repeatedly pressured her to have anal sex, but she turned him down, saying, “No, I can’t, it’s a sure fire way of getting AIDS,” the report said. “The defendant gave her a little smirk and shrugged his shoulders.”

The child was born in 1990 and developed medical problems two weeks later. When the woman called Crother to ask for his medical history, he said he had no medical problems.

“During the conversation, the defendant asked her to leave him alone, and he did not feel concern for the child,” the report said. “The defendant stated that as far as he was concerned, she and the baby were ‘as good as dead.’ ”

The woman then called Crother’s wife, who revealed that he tested positive for the AIDS virus in 1988. His wife has since tested negative three times, the report said.

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Crother later told investigators that he believed the only way to get the AIDS virus was through hundreds of heterosexual contacts, anal sex or intravenous drug use, and that he did not believe he would infect the woman because of the comparatively few times she was exposed.

Since learning he was infected, Crother has had sex with three or four other women, the probation report said. Storch, however, did not grant Chief Deputy Dist. Atty. Vincent J. O’Neill Jr.’s request to compel Crother to reveal the women’s names, saying that such an order could violate Crother’s constitutional rights against self-incrimination.

Despite knowing he was infected, Crother had the affair with the Ventura County woman because he “wanted to have sex and feel a sense of normalcy,” the officer reported.

“As he was in denial (about his infection) he kept seeing himself as being healthy and strong,” the officer wrote. “He did not feel there was a need to tell the victim he was HIV positive because he did not think there was a risk.”

In a July 28 interview with the probation officer, Crother said, “I’ve been remorseful to the point of sickness. I’ve been very upset and emotional about infecting” the woman. “I’m really sorry.”