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Gay man who led straight life and former wife focus on educating the public about HIV prevention.
Freshman Dinitua Anderson, 18, left, and Matlin Ford, 19, met with Jacques Whitfield, following his presentation on HIV in the Health Education class at Consumnes River College in Sacramento, Calif. Whitfield, who was married for 11 years, is HIV positive and now shares his story with young people about the mistakes he made.
MCT PHOTO
Nikki and Jacques Whitfield’s 11-year marriage ended in divorce after he admitted that he’s gay. Whitfield, a veteran attorney, is also HIV-positive and is now a speaker for Sacramento’s Center for AIDS Research, Education & Services, where Nikki Whitfield also works.
MCT PHOTO
Jacques and Nikki Whitfield’s lives had already undergone enough twists to earn them a place on Oprah’s couch. Then came the cruelest turn in the form of a letter from insurer Primerica.
The standard-size letter told Jacques Whitfield he was HIV-positive.
A Sacramento attorney, he had only recently stopped living a lie — admitting to himself, and to his wife, that he was gay. That admission came after years of cheating while attempting to pray his homosexual feelings away.
Remarkably, the couple — while legally separated — had remained close and still shared parental duties.
Casually, Nikki had opened the letter.
After struggling with this bombshell for days, in June 2007 at a midtown restaurant she told Jacques, whom she’d first met through church, to sit down and get a drink.
“I just felt I had this out-of-body experience,” Jacques Whitfield recently told a health class at Cosumnes River College. He recalls somehow getting himself to the bathroom where he threw up and then tried to compose himself.
He had a hard time believing he was HIV-positive, he told the class. “I’m smart. I have three degrees. How the hell did I get HIV? I couldn’t believe that I’m a statistic.”
Nikki Whitfield had not been sexually active with her then-husband for two years, but that offered little comfort as she waited for her test results. At the end of the “longest day of my life,” she had to sneak a moment of jubilation.
“Bittersweet is an understatement — because the father of my children is positive,” she said.
In response to the news that turned their lives upside down, the couple, whose 11-year marriage ended in divorce, has tried to become part of a solution.
Jacques Whitfield had not disclosed his HIV status when he spoke with a reporter for a previous Sacramento Bee article in which he discussed his homosexuality. But now, he said, he wants to talk about it to help educate others.
“I don’t want anyone to have to go through what I went through,” he said.
He serves as a board member and speaker for Sacramento’s Center for AIDS Research, Education & Services (CARES), a one-stop center for AIDS education and treatment.
Meanwhile, Nikki Whitfield began speaking up about the alarming number of black women contracting the HIV virus.
“How come we are not talking about this?” she remembers wondering. She talked to her church but felt she had to do more.
Three years ago, she hosted a forum about the risks to African-American women that attracted 80 professional women. Those women, she said, were like her and had never thought they could get the virus.
Her activism earned her a full-time job with CARES, where she sounds the alarm not just about men on the “down low,” but also urges women to ask men returning from incarceration the brutally tough — but essential — questions.
Jacques Whitfield’s talks to high school and college students, part of CARES’ “Positively Speaking” program, are a frank discussion about his experience and chance to answer questions about the level of risk associated with various sexual behaviors.
At his Cosumnes visit, he tried to strike an even tone about the need to take his antiviral drugs daily and the sometimes debilitating side effects.
Whitfield said he’s eager to reach as many young people as possible.
“My passion now is to spread this message of prevention and awareness to everyone,” he said. “If we are going to be successful in our five-year strategic initiative of ending all new cases, the only way we end it is through education.”
BLACKS AND HIV NUMBERS
Local Resources
African-Americans are the most affected by HIV in the United States.
• At the end of 2007, blacks accounted for 46 percent of people living with a diagnosis of HIV infection among state reporting HIV cases.
• In 2006, black men accounted for two-thirds of new infections among all blacks. The rate of new HIV infection for black men was six times as high as that of white men, nearly three times that of Hispanic/Latino men, and twice that of black women.
• In 2006, the rate of new HIV infection for black women was nearly 15 times as high as that of white women and nearly four times that of Latinas.
Source: US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
The We Care, HIV/AIDS Support Network Inc., offers support for people infected and affected by HIV. Call for the meeting location and time through a 24-hour hotline at 824-1007 or visit www.wecarewb.org.
A HIV Clinic is open for Wilkes-Barre residents only on the first and third Thursday of the month from 2 to 4 p.m. at the Kirby Health Center, 71 N. Franklin St., Wilkes-Barre. For more information, call 208-4268.