Dallas resident Matthew Louis Reese, 31, will be spending the rest of his life behind bars. He pleaded guilty to charges of aggravated s*xual assault with serious bodily injury, s*xual assault of a child, and assault with a deadly weapon. He was charged with all of this after he gave his 15 year old girlfriend HIV.
The relationship started as an online chat flirtation. The girl who is now 17 said that she met Reese online and had never had a boyfriend before him. She told him that she was 17. The night that she met with him in person, she told him that she was actually 15. He continued on in a relationship with her. The girl told the man that she had never kissed anyone before and had never slept with anyone. He insisted that if she didn’t sleep with him he would be forced to cheat on her.
The teen was naïve and impressionable, and so she did what he asked her to do. She slept with Reese repeatedly but had no idea that he had HIV. Reese had been diagnosed in 2006 and was aware of his status but never disclosed this fact to the teen. Her mother caught her on the phone with him one night but when he told her that he was 18, she allowed her daughter to remain in contact.
Reese was arrested and put in jail on drug charges. While he was in jail the two wrote letters back and forth to each other. He told her that he wanted to get her pregnant when he got out and wanted them to move in together. He would shower her with compliments and then ask her to send him money and photos of her with her clothes on. A Dallas detective stated that he was doing this to have control over the girl.
When she fell into a coma for two weeks and became very sick, the girl found out that she had HIV. Reese swore up and down that he was clean. She is now on medication and her health is described as “okay”. She said that there were times when she had wished death upon Reese.
