Businessman Sean Smith has told how he contracted HIV after he was repeatedly gang-raped in a South African prison.

Smith contracted HIV after being repeatedly gang raped (Picture: Wales News Service)

Sean Smith, a business partner of rugby star Gareth Thomas, said he was attacked up to eight times a day during his 19-month stay in St Alban’s jail after his arrest on suspicion of a multi-million-pound fraud.

The 42-year-old, was targeted in a cell he shared with 90 inmates in 2007.

‘They did it not just as part of gang dominance but in my case it was showing supremacy over a white man – I was the only one there,’ he said.


‘It went on for months – there wasn’t much left of me by then anyway… I was pretty much a skeleton.’



After nine months in the jail 30km (17 miles) out of Port Elizabeth, Mr Smith tested positive for HIV.

‘At that point I didn’t give a damn, I was broken, I was broken physically, mentally, I had nothing left I had no spirit at all so I didn’t care,’ he added.

After being granted bail, Mr Smith, from Glamorgan, South Wales, hid in the boot of a British High Commission car and crossed into Lesotho.

He has since been diagnosed with a lymphoma on the brain.

The Home Office was ‘unable to say’ if South Africa had made a request for his extradition.