European court slams Greece for naming and shaming HIV-positive sex workers in 2012

The European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday issued a scathing decision against Greece, rapping authorities for breaches of privacy, medical procedure and judicial due process, over a Health Ministry campaign in the spring of 2012 to name and shame sex workers who were found to be HIV positive after being forcibly tested for the disease.

The case was brought to the European court by 11 Greek nationals, 10 of whom were prostitutes who had been charged with the crime of intentionally attempting to inflict bodily harm after testing positive for HIV. The eleventh plaintiff was the sister of a prostitute, who filed suit after police published her photograph instead of her sister’s.

The women in question were arrested by the police and had to undergo forced blood tests that were carried out in the police stations where they were being held. After testing positive for HIV, their identities, along with personal details and photographs, were made public on the orders of a prosecutor and widely broadcast in the media, particularly on television.

The decision to name and shame HIV-positive sex workers was part of a much-touted campaign by the Health Ministry – then led by Andreas Loverdos – to purportedly raise awareness about sexually transmitted diseases after a spike in HIV cases.

The campaign involved police sweeps in the center of Athens and led to dozens of arrests. All of the defendants were subsequently acquitted by Greek courts in 2016 as there was no evidence to prove that they had knowingly exposed their clients to sexually transmitted diseases by refusing to use a condom during intercourse.

In its decision on Tuesday, the ECHR noted that the prosecutor had failed to examine whether “other measures, capable of ensuring a lesser degree of exposure for the applicants, could have been taken.”

“He had merely ordered the publication of the data in question, without examining the particular situation of each of the applicants or assessing the potential consequences for them of such dissemination of information,” it said.

The decision also noted that the women were subjected to blood tests at police stations rather than at a properly authorized facility, while stressing that the publication of their details and photographs was a breach of their privacy that was “likely to dramatically affect their private and family life, as well as social and employment situation, since its nature was such as to expose them to opprobrium and the risk of ostracism.”

Moreover, it said, “according to the principles set out in a circular from the minister of health, although persons engaged in prostitution were among the social groups for which screening for the HIV virus was, exceptionally, authorized, they were not, however, included in the list of cases justifying an exception to the rule that such tests were confidential.”

The plaintiffs were also denied due process, according to the Strasbourg-based court’s decision, which said that the “applicants had not had a legal possibility to be heard by the prosecutor before he ruled on the disclosure of their date, nor could they, once the order had been issued, lodge an appeal in order to have it re-examined by the prosecutor attached to the appellate court.”