Geoffrey Pearce O.A.M. was a prison corrections officer at Long Bay Jail in New South Wales who, shortly after completing his training at 21 with his whole life and career ahead of him, was deliberately stabbed with a needle contaminated with HIV-positive blood by an inmate from the Jail’s AIDS wing, The Malabar Assessment Unit.

There was no clear motive for the attack: colleagues and inmates alike described Pearce as a ‘gentle giant’ who came to the job “with no ego” and was genuinely committed to assisting inmate rehabilitation. Diagnosed HIV positive following the incident, he nonetheless returned to duty and turned his diagnosis and the publicity surrounding the assault into a platform for education, confronting the fear and stigma of the early 1990s by demonstrating that people living with HIV were not contagious in everyday settings and could lead relatively normal lives. His consequential advocacy left such a profound mark in a short time that he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 1998 and, in 2020, had a correctional facility named in his honour: the Geoffrey Pearce Correctional Centre.

All articles and relevant documents from this episode are available on the:

XTRA Tea Blog AIDS: THE LOST VOICES - Geoffrey Pearce OAM

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Outro Music

'If I Can Dream' by Elvis Presley

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Background Music - Always On My Mind (Piano Cover by Riyandi Kusuma)

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Elvis Presley - Always On My Mind (Piano Cover by Riyandi Kusuma)

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Music / Instrumental by Aries Beats 'A Sin' + WEBSITE

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Third-party media: Used under 'fair use' for the sole purpose of education, criticism and/or research relating to HIV/AIDS, featured in this podcast which has no (Zero) commercial gain. No copyright infringement intended -

• British Newspaper Archives / Newspapers

Long Bay Jail in New South Wales has long been regarded as Australia’s “toughest prison,” and in the 1980s and 1990s it became notorious as the site of the prison system’s AIDS wing, initially called the Malabar Assessment Unit and grimly referred to by inmates as “death row.” Press coverage from the era documents tense confrontations as prison officers staged strikes and protests when inmates labelled “AIDS carriers” were not segregated and were moved into the main population, reflecting both genuine fear of infection among staff and vocal hostility from other prisoners unwilling to share space with those infected.

Within that fraught environment, individual stories emerged: transsexual inmate Tanya Spence forming a relationship with fellow inmate David on the segregation wing, and Neil Carroll, a convicted armed robber who redirected his sentence into AIDS peer-support work and, later, playwrighting, producing several AIDS-awareness plays performed for inmates and the broader public — acts that complicated a narrative otherwise dominated by fear, stigma and institutional conflict.

All articles and relevant documents from this episode are available on the:

XTRA Tea Blog AIDS: THE LOST VOICES - Long Bay Jail, Australia

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Background Music:

Dancing on My Own by Brooklyn Duo

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TV Documentary inside Long Bay Jail c.1987

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Music / Instrumental by Aries Beats 'A Sin' + WEBSITE

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Third-party media: Used under 'fair use' for the sole purpose of education, criticism and/or research relating to HIV/AIDS, featured in this podcast which has no (Zero) commercial gain. No copyright infringement intended -

• British Newspaper Archives / Newspapers

In the third and final episode of Prison and HIV Activist Brian Carmichael, we hear the sentencing outcome of Brian’s 2001 conviction after an incident in which a police officer, having kicked his feet from underneath him, alleged that Brian’s subsequent fall caused an injury and led to a battery charge; Brian contests the ruling, mounting an appeal that winds its way through the courts while he and his then partner relocate to New York City, a move that becomes both refuge and new terrain for his activism as he navigates legal uncertainty, personal upheaval and the broader struggle for justice.

Upon his release thirteen years later, he resumed his activism, highlighting the appalling conditions and unnecessary deaths of fellow inmates at Rikers Island. Celebrating years of sobriety and sober living, Brian uses his voice and long-standing experience as an activist to raise attention to these abuses; his testimony and campaigning are widely regarded as a valued contribution in calls for meaningful reform.

All articles and relevant documents from this episode are available on the:

XTRA Tea Blog AIDS: THE LOST VOICES - Brian Carmichael

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Connect with Brian Carmichael:

Facebook Instagram X.com Visual AIDS

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Music / Instrumental by Aries Beats 'A Sin' + WEBSITE

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Outro Music:

'Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now' by Sarah Potenza & Dave Audé

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Third-party media: Used under 'fair use' for the sole purpose of education, criticism and/or research relating to HIV/AIDS, featured in this podcast which has no (Zero) commercial gain. No copyright infringement intended -

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• Music 'Nothings Gonna Stop Us Now' by Sarah Potenza & Dave Audé