Prisoner sues after catching hepatitis C in jail

A violent drunken bully who killed his girlfriend's three-year-old son is suing for damages because he caught hepatitis C in jail. Killer Mark Mietto, who escaped with just four years in prison over the 2001 killing of little Jonathan Guiver, has demanded compensation for his "pain and suffering". His plight has attracted little sympathy from the shattered dad of his young victim.
Drunken Mietto smashed Jonathan's skull at the boy's mother's Vermont home in June 2001. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter, saying he had dropped the young boy on his head accidentally, a claim rejected by the court. Jonathan had complained Mietto had harmed him previously and an autopsy found bruises on his body consistent with previous child abuse. Now Mietto claims he is suffering and deserves to be paid damages.
In a writ lodged in the Victorian County Court on Monday, the 34-year-old alleged he had contracted hepatitis C from fellow inmates at Port Phillip Prison. His suffered liver dysfunction, fatigue, abdominal pain, night sweats and pain and suffering, the writ said. The former laborer and painter was also permanently "incapacitated for employments to which he is suited", the writ alleges. Mietto has accused the private prison's operator, G4S Custodial Services, of failing to protect him from the deadly disease. The prison operator should have warned him about the dangers of sharing electric razors and other personal items with other inmates, and should have isolated prisoners with the disease, the writ claims. It is believed Mietto has claimed to the prison he was infected with hepatitis C while using a communal electric razor in the prison's high-security Charlotte Unit, which is designed to manage difficult prisoners. Mietto was shifted to the unit after several prisoners alleged he was standing over them.
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