The Court sentenced the offender to 16 months' imprisonment (reduced by 15% for a guilty plea to approximately 13.5 months) served by way of intensive correction order for recklessly inflicting grievous bodily harm by transmitting HSV-2 through deliberate non-disclosure of STI status despite direct questioning by the victim. The Court rejected the defence submission that ASD and ADHD materially reduced moral culpability, finding that while these conditions may have affected the offender's capacity to navigate interpersonal disclosure, they did not substantially reduce his capacity to understand the wrongfulness of his conduct, and that his repeated decisions to have unprotected sex on multiple subsequent occasions negated any characterisation of the offending as impulsive or condition-driven. The Court held that general and specific deterrence were primary sentencing considerations given the prevalence of STIs in Australia and the offender's prior uncharged conduct of infecting another partner, while accepting that the offender's mental conditions would make custody more onerous and that loss of his teaching career constituted a relevant subjective matter (though not mitigation of seriousness).
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