Valentino Talluto, stigma and extreme cases

Valentino Talluto is a man convicted of transmitting HIV to dozens of girls and women; but while his story is an extreme case, the morbid and toxic narrative media use when talking about this virus is always the same. Posted in: #fediblog, #hiv, #news, #stigma

Valentino Talluto

We came across an Italian-speaking podcast telling the story of Valentino Talluto, a man convicted of transmitting HIV to many people, a case that shocked Rome and the whole of Italy and brought a dramatic truth to evidence: when dealing with HIV, media talk less than expected. And often in inappropriate ways. Unfortunately the podcast is in Italian only so we won't link it here.

The same old toxic narrative

When the news covers an extreme case like that of Valentino Talluto, journalists' tone is always the same:

This fuels stigma against HIV-positive people, who are considered solely responsible for other people's health when, in fact, everyone involved should be accountable for their own sexual behaviour. The immediate consequence of media-guided serophobia is that, once they learn a friend, colleague or partner is HIV-positive, far too many people still push them away, as if just talking to them could transmit the infection, without knowing that nowadays the greatest danger is someone who has never been tested because they consider themselves immune to risk, yet goes around passing the virus left and right: this is called unscreened HIV.

The girls Valentino Talluto harmed are therefore victims twice over: of their abuser, and of a distorted culture, especially present in Italy, built on prejudice about sexuality and sexually transmitted infections, HIV included, which are seen almost as divine punishment for “immoral behaviour” rather than as conditions to be diagnosed and treated in time, like any other. Media-guided serophobia hurts them too.

In 2014 a young woman filed a complaint against Talluto, but he had been spreading the virus since 2006 (or perhaps even earlier). Proper sex education, along with prevention campaigns focused on risk behaviours rather than on “risk categories”, would have given every girl all the tools to protect herself, testing included, and the cases of intentional infection would probably have stopped at one (which would be too much as well, of course), but the man would have been stopped from doing harm right away.

In fact, we think that if pre-exposure prophylaxis were offered as a preventive drug to the whole sexually active population, disturbed people like Valentino Talluto wouldn't be able to do this much damage.

PrEP exists, but there isn't enough information about it in the so-called “mainstream”.

There's no point crying over spilt milk, or pitying those who find themselves facing a chronic infection because of someone else; the State has every new infection on its conscience until it starts dealing with prevention in a truly concrete way.

Right now, instead, prevention is moving slowly, at least in Italy. Politics priority is to hide the situation, because HIV only concerns “certain groups”; people keep repeating “I trust him, so I don't protect myself”, as if trust were a form of prophylaxis, and in doing so they leave the field wide open to a twisted mind like Talluto's.

We want to remind our readers: we are all sero-involved. For better or worse, HIV and the feelings connected to it concern everyone, and knowledge is the only way to defend ourselves against a condition that today is completely preventable.

Unprotected sex while HIV-positive?

It's not us saying it, it's science: if a person with HIV is on effective antiretroviral therapy, they cannot transmit the virus sexually, so in theory they can have sex without a condom, although, of course, nobody recommends condomless intercorses, since there are dozens of other infections, more or less manageable, transmitted that way.

Unfortunately this kind of information does not easily reach mainstream media, because the idea of sex as “sin” and illness as punishment still suits those in power.

Clearly, extreme cases like Valentino Talluto are people who are NOT on treatment and have a very high viral load. Then there was the uproar over the news of a priest who organized chemsex events but, as usual, nobody bothered to find out whether he was on treatment, or whether the other participants were on PrEP. Newspapers only care about the homosexual HIV-positive man infecting the world. Setting aside that this person probably wasn't a saint, despite wearing a cassock. To public opinion it seems that being HIV-positive is the real crime, while any other offences fade into the background.

Sexuality, AIDS and death: an ancestral fear

A distorted view of sexuality has given rise to many urban legends about HIV and AIDS: AIDS Mary, a woman who hooks up a man at a club and, after the one-night stand, writes on the mirror in lipstick “welcome to the world of AIDS”.

Even the Italian band Elio e le Storie Tese poked fun at this tale, as they did with all the others of the “my cousin told me” kind.

There's also a male version, AIDS Harry: unlike the female one, though, the villain is a handsome, kind, romantic young man who sweeps the unfortunate woman off her feet during a holiday and gives her a present, telling her to open it only on the flight home. Inside the package, of course, the usual surprise: “Welcome to the world of AIDS”.

Stories like these exist to feed morbid curiosity, and we won't hide that we thought of an Italian “AIDS Harry” when we first heard about Valentino, but sadly it was all true; fortunately this man received a final sentence of 24 years in 2019. But nothing will give the girls back their HIV-negative status, nor will it erase the prejudice spread by articles and reports built on a morbid narrative. A stigma exploited every first of December, World AIDS Day, or to stoke outrage against the latest maniac; and one for which those very journalists remain responsible.

Conclusion

Some people, given the ironic tone we use when talking about HIV, decided to claim that we promote intentional transmission of the virus or justify those who act like Valentino Talluto. Nothing at all: we completely distance ourselves from irresponsible sexual behaviour and, since both of us have experienced HIV up close, one directly and one not, we have always dealt with the condition properly, showing our faces and talking about it when needed. We only make fun of all the serophobes wallowing in prejudice, exposing their absurd contradictions and throwing them right back in their faces.