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One of the Jamestown girls who fell hard is Amber Arnold, 18, who dated Williams for a year. Awaiting her HIV test results, Arnold harbors little regret about the relationship: "I just want people to know that even though he did know that he had it and he did this to a lot of people, he is not a monster." Starteisha Hood, 16, says Williams infected three of her friends, but she too comes to his defense: "The girls could have said no; it takes two."
That so many did not say no is what horrifies parents and health educators in Chautauqua, who say safe-sex information is widely distributed in the area. As clinics were flooded with young people seeking HIV tests in recent days and an AIDS-education seminar drew hundreds, many, like Sue Genco, a Jamestown mother of three, came to see the Williams case as "our wake-up call."
As for Williams' future, Chautauqua prosecutors plan to charge him with first-degree assault in the cases of those who contracted HIV from him. But that may do little to heal the trauma he has inflicted on circles of Jamestown youth. The hope offered by new AIDS treatments still hasn't entered their thinking. "There's nothing to do now," says Danielle Rapp, 18, "but watch your friends die."
--Reported by Elaine Rivera/Jamestown and Barbara Maddux/New York