They met in church. She worked for the bishop. He ran the men’s ministry and was in the bishop’s inner circle.
Their church work together led to a romance that now has become part of a Clayton County trial of a man accused of knowingly exposing women to HIV.
Craig Lamar Davis of Stone Mountain faces two counts of reckless HIV, a felony for which he could face 20 years in prison.
He faced the second of his two accusers Thursday morning. Two women claim he exposed them to HIV. The woman at the center of the Clayton case has yet to test positive. The other, a Fulton County warehouse employee and mother of two grown daughters, says she was not so lucky.
But the defense contends that Davis stuck by the Fulton County woman even after she told him she had contracted the virus. At one point, the defense called for a mistrial, which the judge prompted denied, after the woman mentioned Davis had been in prison, saying the word was prejudicial. Davis, in fact, had been in jail.
On Thursday, the Fulton County woman told the court in a highly emotional testimony how she had been celibate 15 years at the time she began a sexual relationship with Davis, whom she met in 2010. Despite their intimacy, he never told her he had HIV, she testified. And it wasn’t until a routine checkup with her doctor in Jan. 2012 that she learned she had the virus.
“She (her doctor) gave me this piece of paper, She said ‘Read this. Don’t look at the numbers. Look at the bottom of the page’ That’s your test result,’ the woman said, stopping to wipe her face with a tissue.
Thursday’s testimony is a dress rehearsal of sorts for the woman who will face Davis in her own case in a courtroom in Fulton County.
Thursday’s testimony also contradicts Davis’s assertions that he was never a minister, a point the defense tried to clarify by asking the woman to distinguish between someone who oversees a ministry and a pastor.
The woman on Thursday recalled the volatile conversation she had with Davis in her doctor’s office shortly after learning she had the virus.
Are you HIV positive?
He said ‘What are you talking about?’
I’m here at the doctor’s office. Are you (HIV) positive? What have you done to me?
Davis: The test can’t be right.
Why didn’t you tell me this. You had no right to do this to me, she recalled.
“I haven’t been active with anybody else I haven’t had a blood transfusion . He’s the only one,” the witness told the jury. “It was mind-blowing. He was so calm. He kept saying ‘you’re not going to die’.
Only much later did he admit to her that he had contracted the virus in July 2011. At that point she said “whatever you do don’t do it to anyone else.” He was dismissive.
“He’d always be like ‘Girl, whatever’,” she testified.
The women went to the Atlanta police after her daughter brought his Facebook page to her attention. The page showed him with numerous women.
“I thought he was a minister,” she recalled her daughter telling her.
It was then, after she approached the authorities about her situation, that she learned about Clayton County case against Davis.
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