A Kent County man charged with exposing his sex partner to HIV without telling him could be back online, looking for partners again.
We uncovered a web page profile with his picture, actively looking for sex
By judge’s orders, Jeremy Merithew is not supposed to be meeting up with sex partners online.
However, activity on a dating website may indicate he’s disregarding those orders.
In August, 2012, Merithew was in Kent County Court, charged with having unprotected sex with a man he met on the gay dating website Adam4Adam.com.
Detectives said he didn’t tell the man he was HIV positive, which is a felony.
Court documents show as part of his bond, Merithew was to “Not engage in any activity on the Internet …. establishing sexual liaisons.”
This weekend a profile popped up again on the same site featuring a picture of Merithew fully nude.
The profile appears to violate a judge’s orders, in saying, “Looking for friendship, 1-on-1 sex.
“It`s pretty much straight up sexually explicit that he`s just looking for sex and that`s it,” said a man from the gay community in West Michigan.
The man we spoke with didn’t want to be identified. We will call him “John” in this report.
John said he contacted FOX 17 out of concern for the community.
He said he’s a daily user of the website and said he knew Merithew for a number of years, even before he moved to Grand Rapids.
He said Merithew was more open about his HIV status back then.
However, now he says Merithew is not disclosing it.
“The safety of the community is my biggest concern,” said John.
Although the profile doesn’t have Merithew’s name, only his picture, it lists his stats which are a match.
His age is the same, height, weight and body type.
There are also sexual comments listed, one saying “Raw sex is the best.”
“In the community he`s just expressing his desire to not wear condoms,” said John.
According to John, there is also an area where a person can mark their HIV status as negative or positive. On the profile we viewed, that section had been left empty.
“In my experience, someone who has left that section blank doesn`t want people to know,” said John.
We stopped by Merithew’s home to talk to him, but nobody answered the door.
I contacted the Kent County Sheriff’s Office about the profile, detectives say they are investigating the new information.
“I don`t want the community dying you know,” said John. “My main concern is that he`s HIV positive and not telling anybody about it and is infecting the gay community of West Michigan.”
The Kent County Prosecutor’s Office says they are looking into the profile as well.
