A YOUNG female actress who contracted HIV in the California porn industry crisis has told how she is now living in fear of a premature death.
Deadly performance … Lara Roxx is no longer smiling after testing HIV positive as a result of her work. Lara Roxx was infected with the disease that causes the killer AIDS virus after shooting scenes of unprotected sex with actor Darren James last month.
She is 21.
In an interview on US television, Ms Roxx gave an emotional account of the nightmare she lives with every day. “Dying too early, dying too soon, dying too young,” she said.
“I now understand how dangerous (the industry) really is, but $2000 ($2867) a day was kind of attractive. Was it worth it? No. I now have a disease because of it.”
James contracted HIV in early March soon after a trip to Brazil, but he continued working when a routine test failed to pick up the fact he was positive.
Ms Roxx, who has since quit the porn industry, is one of several female performers thought to have been infected by James.
The mini-epidemic forced California into a filming moratorium that was only lifted today.
Ms Roxx claimed she was convinced that industry’s HIV testing scheme would keep her safe from the disease.
“When Daniel (Perrault, Ms Roxx’s manager) told me that Darren James was HIV positive, it totally freaked me out,” she said.
“It totally made me realise how I trusted this system that wasn’t to be trusted at all, because it obviously doesn’t work … I thought porn people were the cleanest people in the world, is what I thought.”
HIV tests conducted by porn producers can reportedly take up to 60 days to be returned – a period in which performers are likely to indulge in plenty of high-risk sexual activity with similarly active co-stars.
Critics of the industry claim neither the tests nor California’s government have done enough to prevent young females in particular from the risks of pornographic film making.
Ms Roxx’s case and others like it may have been prevented, they say, if HIV testing procedures had been introduced as a matter of course by the Californian Government, rather than being independently undertaken by production houses.
Making the use of condoms a legal requirement on movie sets has also been strongly advised by everyone except those that can make it happen, like the government or film regulators.
Ms Roxx says a troubled family life steered her into an industry that rakes in several million dollars a year.
After dancing led to striping and then sex movies, Ms Roxx hopes to forge a career in fashion design, but her HIV will remain impossible to ignore