My rapist deliberately gave me HIV. I was just 15
BBCGetting off the school bus one Thursday afternoon, Sam received a call which changed his life.
The sexual health nurse on the other end of the phone told the 15-year-old he had been given HIV.
"In that moment, everything shattered," Sam, whose name has been changed by the BBC to protect his identity, recalls several years on.
"I had no understanding of what that meant, I thought it was potentially a death sentence."
Sam had been deliberately given the virus by the man who also raped him.
He is one of seven men to have been targeted by Adam Hall, who was jailed for life with a minimum term of at least 23 years after being found guilty of multiple offences following a lengthy trial at Newcastle Crown Court.
Hall, from Washington, had met Sam on a dating app.
He did not tell the teenager about his HIV diagnosis or that he was not taking the medication which could have kept his virus at non-transmissible levels.
Northumbria Police"I just felt like I had my rights taken away, I feel just a sense of, from the beginning, being lied to," Sam says.
"Being just young and vulnerable at the time and having that taken advantage of, just having my right to decide to consent taken away, it was a massive rollercoaster but it was just constantly downhill."
The young and vulnerable man says he did not fully understand what the diagnosis meant at first.
"I was mortified not only at the situation, but at myself," he recalls.
"How has this happened to me? I felt like I was sinking. It was really just devastating."
Now Sam takes daily medication to keep his viral load at an undetectable level, meaning it cannot be passed to anyone else.
That is what Hall claimed in court he had been doing, but jurors concluded that was just one of his many lies.
Coming to terms with his diagnosis, Sam wants to help others understand what it means.
There is still stigma and misunderstanding around his illness, which he is keen to assuage.
"A lot of people still judge it and you're just seen as either dirty or unclean, or that you just sleep around all the time," Sam says.
"It's really just a hurtful process from start to finish."
The chief executive of HIV awareness charity Terrence Higgins Trust, Richard Angell, has praised the victims like Sam for their "incredible courage" in coming forward, with the trial a "reminder of the huge amount of stigma people living with HIV still face in our society".
"It is vital that the actions of one man are not used to further stigmatise an already marginalised community," he says. "That would only cause further harm, including to the victims in this case."
Northumbria Police says this is only the second time a conviction has been made in England for the intentional transmission of HIV.
The force believes Hall may have abused other men across the country, from County Durham, Middlesbrough and North and West Yorkshire to Manchester, and London.
Sam is encouraging others to come forward and report what happened to them, despite the distress caused by reliving his abuse during police interviews and the trial.
"It is extremely, extremely hard to go through but at the end of the day, once you've gone through that, the worst part is over and you do feel relief," he says.
The trial began in November and ended in March, with jurors reaching their verdicts after almost 43 hours of deliberations.
"Hearing the news that he'd been found guilty was such a relief," Sam says. "In knowing that I was believed, validated."
He has many questions for Hall.
"Why?" Sam says, "what was the reason?
"What possessed you to do what you did? Not just to me, but to everyone else that you've done it to, what did you gain out of it?"
While his rapist now faces a long time in prison, Sam is looking forward to the rest of his own life as he plans to return to education with a view to becoming a nurse.
"Just knowing that's a chapter I can now close," he says of the court case.
"It has helped me to push forward and move on."
- If you have been affected by the issues raised in this story, organisations that can offer help and support are available on the BBC's Action Line
