Man Gets Probation for Passing AIDS Virus : Courts: Woman calls her HIV infection ‘murder’ and their daughter has the fatal disease. Case is headed for an appellate court.

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 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 human immunodeficiency virus. Her 2-year-old daughter--whom genetic testing identified as Crother’s child--has AIDS, according to the probation report.

Crother agreed to be found guilty in an unusual legal move designed to speed his case to an appeals court. His attorney, Robert Sanger, said he plans to file the appeal next week.

The probation report tells of a clandestine affair between an ill-informed AIDS carrier and an unsuspecting woman who now fears that she may die before her daughter.

Crother told the probation officer he probably contracted the AIDS virus during sexual encounters with men in a Santa Barbara adult bookstore where he worked 11 years ago. Crother said he wrongly believed that the virus was difficult to transmit through heterosexual intercourse.

“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,” the report said.