One Male Performer Is Positive for Syphilis, Agents Say

LOS ANGELES — There is one male performer in the Los Angeles porn community who tested positive for syphilis in July and worked three times with a doctored STI test during the past three weeks, talent agents Shy Love and Derek Hay told XBIZ Thursday afternoon.

The performer, who was on Love’s Adult Talent Managers roster until this morning, admitted to working while knowingly positive with syphilis, and also to doctoring his test. The admission was made to both Hay, the owner of LA Direct Models, and the production executive that realized the test had been altered.

Love, who cut the performer from her roster earlier today after finding out, said she and Hay wanted to notify the community that there is in fact a positive syphilis performer.

“Our first instinct was the safety of the talent,” Love said. “We’re not going to hide something because the talent happens to be on our roster. It’s important to make talent aware that there is one positive performer and they should get tested because there is a potential risk right now.”

Love said the positive performer went behind her without the agency’s knowledge to book the three scenes in which he has worked since testing positive. One of the scenes was with one of the female performers at LA Direct Models, Hay confirmed.

Love said that Adult Talent Managers keeps a running spreadsheet of her talent’s availability and testing status, and that if a production company would’ve contacted her agency, rather than hire the performer on its own, this could have been prevented.

The performer admitted to Hay he was feeling ill in mid-July and underwent tests with his personal physician, at which time the syphilis was originally diagnosed. He was also given medication at the time, Hay said. Then he tested on July 21, approximately a week later, at Talent Testing Services, which also identified the performer as positive for syphilis, the agents said. Due to privacy standards, TTS did not notify Love of the positive test.

Talent Testing Services, which tests for syphilis as part of its regular panel, did nothing wrong with its handling of the performer’s test result, both Love and Hay said.

Hay told XBIZ the discrepancy on the performer’s test was discovered on Aug. 7, when the producer who received the scene paperwork from the director “was doing his normal due diligence and noticed an irregularity in this performer’s test paper in comparison to what he was used to receiving from TTS.”

“He realized that the syphilis portion of the test result was missing and that is what triggered the in-depth analysis,” Hay explained. “That producer contacted me to see if there was another test on the same performer to compare a version of the test to see if there was a difference.”

Hay said the portion of the test that notes “reactive or not reactive” for syphilis had been obscured.

Both Hay and Love said the performer in question so far has agreed to cooperate and told them he plans to report all the information about his past three scenes to them so they can help notify everyone that may be affected. The producer who recognized the discrepancy on the test is also involved with identifying potential performers affected, the agents said. At post time, they still were waiting for that information to be delivered.

In related news today, Adult Production Health & Safety Services (APHSS) announced that its semi-annual syphilis testing program scheduled for September would instead begin immediately and run through the end of September.

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