A MAN who was deliberately infected with HIV has shared his story.

Lenny, an American living in Brighton, found he was HIV positive in February 2016 after Daryll Rowe secretly sabotaged the condom they were using.

Rowe, from Edinburgh, was the first person to be convicted in the UK for deliberately infecting others with the virus and was jailed for life in April 2018.

He is said to have embarked on a “revenge” campaign on the gay community after he was diagnosed with HIV himself.

He met his victims on gay dating app Grindr.

Lenny is one of five men who tell their stories in a new BBC documentary, The Man Who Used HIV As A Weapon.

He said Rowe had been “adamant” about having unprotected sex after the pair met online and then, later, in Brighton. And he said Rowe told him about the damaged condom only several weeks after they had slept together.

Lenny said Rowe quickly became “possessive” and “insulting” in a string of abusive messages.

It was only after Lenny tried to block Rowe that he received the phone call telling him he had ripped the condom.

At first he did not take the threat seriously, but after he became sick two weeks later he visited a clinic where he tested positive for HIV.

“I remember saying to myself, how can I be so stupid,” said Lenny, who “felt like his life was over”.

When a nurse revealed she had seen four men with identical cases, all relating to an unnamed Scotsman, Lenny went straight to Sussex Police who immediately linked his ordeal to a string of similar reports.

Police arrested Rowe and discovered he had targeted hundreds of other men on dating apps.

After briefly going into hiding, Rowe was charged and handed a life sentence in April 2018 and ordered a serve at least 12 years.

Rowe had infected five men from the Brighton area and the North East with HIV, while at least five others narrowly escaped contracting the life-changing virus.

The BBC documentary tells the intimate and shocking accounts of the five victims, some of whom have never told their families.

Victims tell how Rowe would lie about his HIV status, sabotage condoms and later send abusive text messages taunting them.

Twenty-four men reported Rowe to the police,

but nobody knows how many others he may have slept with.

The Man Who Used HIV As A Weapon is available on BBC iPlayer now.