SEXUAL health workers have been lauded for being the first people to raise the alarm about a man deliberately infecting lovers with HIV.

Staff at the Claude Nicol sexual health and contraception (SHAC) clinic in Eastern Road, Brighton, have spoken exclusively to The Argus about how they realised their patients had been targeted by the same person.

At the clinic opposite the Royal Sussex County Hospital, Afra Barrett, senior health advisor, and Daniel Richardson, a sexual health/HIV consultant, had been forewarned in January by colleagues in the sexual health profession that a young man accused of similar crimes elsewhere in the UK had moved to Brighton.

Shortly afterwards Darryl Rowe’s first victim arrived at their practice.

Mr Richardson said the patient’s stories of Rowe’s cruel and deliberate actions were unique in his 20 years working in HIV treatment.

He said: “People said they’d met on Grindr which isn’t unusual, but that he was a bit odd during sex, and then there were these malicious texts afterwards.”

Ms Barrett said: “It came out in the stories that patients were telling to us that this was highly unusual, and alarm bells rang.

“The initial patient I saw, we said to him ‘Some of these things sound quite concerning, is this something you might be interested in taking any further?’

“And he said ‘yes I would’, so we got him confidentially in touch with the police.

“Part of the reason we wanted to do that was because these people did feel quite upset and quite disempowered.”

Rowe, 27, originally of Edinburgh, was convicted on Thursday of deliberately infecting five men with HIV and attempting to infect five more.

He would badger lovers into having unprotected sex or, if rebuffed, use doctored condoms from which he had removed the tips.

In the days following his encounters he would send twisted mocking texts to his victims.

One read: “Maybe you have the fever. I came inside you and I have HIV. LOL.”

Evelyn Barker, managing director of Brighton and Sussex University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “I am immensely proud of the way our sexual health team supported, and continue to support, their patients and helped them report what happened to the police and bring the perpetrator to justice.

“They have played an absolutely vital role in securing this week’s conviction.”

No SHAC staff breached their patients’ confidentiality either with the police or with The Argus. Names, ages, and conditions were never discussed with Argus reporters and it was the patients who spoke to the police, not SHAC.