ABSTRACT
The applicant, a Finnish national, was married to X, who was not Finnish. They divorced on 22 September 1995. They are both infected with HIV. On 19 March 1992 X was informed of the results of a blood test performed on 6 March 1992, indicating that he was HIV-positive. In 1992 X was charged and investigated for a number of offences of sexual assault, rape and attempted manslaughter by deliberately subjecting the complainants to a risk of HIV infection. The applicant refused to give evidence to police against her husband. At a hearing before the City Court on 22 April 1992 in public, X refused to reply to a question put by one of the complainant’s counsel as to whether the applicant was also an HIV carrier. The City Court summoned the applicant to appear before it as a witness on 20 May 1992, but she relied on her right not to give evidence in a case concerning her husband. On 12 August 1992, despite his objections, the City Court ordered a senior doctor to give evidence. He disclosed to the court medical data concerning the applicant. Other doctors were also required to give evidence despite their objections. On 8 and 9 March 1993 the police carried out a search at the hospital where the applicant and X had occasionally been treated. The police seized all the records concerning the applicant and appended copies of these to the record of the investigation concerning the charges against X of attempted manslaughter. These measures had been ordered by the prosecution. After photocopying the records the police returned them to the hospital. On 10 March 1993 the City Court decided to include the copies of the seized records in its case file. On 19 May 1993 X was convicted on three counts of attempted manslaughter and rape and sentenced to imprisonment. The City Court published the operative part of the judgment, an abridged version of its reasoning and an indication of the law which it had applied in the case. It ordered that the full reasoning and the documents in the case be kept confidential for 10 years. Both the complainants as well as X had requested a longer period of confidentiality. On 10 December 1993, the Court of Appeal, inter alia, upheld the conviction of X, in addition, convicted him on two further such counts, increased his total sentence of imprisonment and upheld the City Court’s decision that the case documents should remain confidential for a period of 10 years. The Supreme Court refused to grant X leave to appeal. On 19 May 1995 the applicant applied to the Supreme Court for an order quashing the Court of Appeal’s judgment in so far as it permitted the information and material about her to become available to the public as from 2002, alternatively an order reversing the Court of Appeal’s judgment as being incompatible with A 8. On 1 September 1995 the Supreme Court dismissed the applicant’s application for an order quashing or reversing the Court of Appeal’s on the grounds that the first application had been lodged out of time and she did not have locus standi to make the second. The applicant complained of violations of her right to respect for private and family life as guaranteed by A 8. Comm found unanimously V 8, not necessary to examine 13.
