Annette Newman was celibate for 14 years and then her new lover gave her HIV

ANNETTE Newman had been single for 14 years. After finally meeting someone she thought she could love, her beau did something unthinkable to her.

The mother of two, 49, from Wales had been alone since her divorce and had been celibate.

When she met Jason Townsend, 45, on a Facebook poker game the pair instantly hit it off.

They soon met offline, but for a while, Annette thought Jason wasn’t interested in her, as the relationship failed to get sexual.

“He kept saying to me that it had been a long time since he had a relationship. I was getting to the point where maybe he didn’t fancy me and we should call it a day,”metro.co.uk reported.

But what was holding Jason back was much more sinister.

In a YouTube video from SWNS People Annette said after the pair’s initial meeting in London, they subsequently had a 17-month relationship.

They finally consummated their relationship in 2012 — without using protection — as Annette had a contraceptive implant. It proved to be the biggest mistake of her life.

“Just one Christmas when he was staying here, which he usually did on a very often occasion, he fell ill,” she said in the video.

“I had to take him to the doctors on Boxing Day, he was admitted to the hospital that day and he wanted to go back to London.

She said when he was taken to the hospital doctors told her Jason was “very ill” but nobody would tell her what was wrong with him.

“I found out a bit later on he had lesions on the brain, which was discovered when he had his MRI scan. Nobody else would say why they’d appeared.”

Annette was kept in the dark about Jason’s real condition, so she started doing some research of her own.

“I found an empty packet of tablets and I took them and came home, done a bit of Googling.

“It was either cancer, HIV or Aids was the three reasons for this medication to be taken.”

Annette said she thought it must have been cancer.

“It never dawned on me that it could be anything else.”

But it turned out to be her worst nightmare. Annette was later diagnosed with HIV.

“I came home completely shocked,” she said.

“I had to tell my children, my family, it was the most absolute terrible time of my life.”

Annette said when she confronted Jason in the hospital, she was in disbelief.

“You were my best friend, how could you do it, we were supposed to be getting married,” she said she’d told him.

She later discovered Jason had been carrying HIV since the 1980s, having most likely contracting it when he was a teenager.

Annette went to the police and Jason was arrested. He was subsequently jailed for 27 months.