Colorado Bureau of Investigation records state Teresa Tomaino sold sex “with knowledge of AIDS.”
She’s outing herself as a prostitute, she says, if that’s what it takes to “let people know that cops are making stuff up.”
Safety officials offer no explanation for why Tomaino was branded with carrying the deadly, stigmatizing virus that she doesn’t in fact have. The negligence — if not viciousness — in her case and at least one other suggest the city doesn’t bother with details.
Tomaino is homeless and has spent many of her 38 years making bad choices about her body, drugs and the law. In 2007, she was busted for offering an undercover cop “a good time” in exchange for twenty bucks and carrying a crack pipe that vice officers found in her bra. She was booked on prostitution.
Fair enough. Though what happened next is sick.
After her arrest, someone with access to CBI records took it upon themselves to pile on to Tomaino’s charges in the computerized database. A felony charge added without her knowledge accuses her of knowingly exposing clients to AIDS.
Health department test results disclosed by Tomaino read negative for HIV.
Prosecutors never pursued the extra charge. She learned of it this year, two years after the ticket, while seeking help to kick her drug habit, get a job and find a home.
“I was in shock. I still am,” she says of the moment the letters A-I-D-S popped onto the computer screen when a social worker called up her record.
She isn’t the only one.
Kim, a 37-year-old Denver woman who also has worked as a prostitute, recalls the day she learned of the virus that she, too, doesn’t have.
She was applying for waitressing jobs when her mother, aware of her history, reminded her that employers would check her rap sheet.
“She looked it up online, stood up and smacked me on the face,” Kim remembers.
“She kept asking ‘How could you have AIDS and not tell me?’ And my son kept saying, ‘Ma, I don’t want you to die.’ “
It took an HIV test and papers from the health department to prove her negative results to her family. Then it took a full year to convince the city to clear her.
But the damage was done. Employers had turned her down, pointing to the HIV charge.
“I was trying to get me a job and get my life together. And the cops derailed me,” she says.
Kim and Tomaino blame their arresting officers.
“They probably thought we’re just whores; we’ll never try to get jobs to get our lives together. They probably thought we’ll never find what’s on our records,” Kim says.
“They probably went back to their department and laughed all about it,” Tomaino adds.
Police say information provided to CBI in both cases “was generated at the jail” by Denver sheriff’s deputies in charge of booking. The Sheriff’s Department, in turn, says it has no records about HIV. In other words, there’s no telling who’s responsible.
“We’ll look into it,” says Denver police spokesman Sonny Jackson.
“I can’t tell you how it got there. I wish I could,” added sheriff’s Capt. Frank Gale.
It’s possible, of course, that both charges were honest mistakes by the city. It’s also possible they weren’t.
Both women, meantime, have done their time.
“When we commit a crime, we’re punished,” Tomaino says. “But when they use their badges and mess with people, nothing ever happens.”
Susan Greene writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-1989 or greene@denverpost.com.
