The brothers were infected with HIV/AIDS following a blood transfusion.
Photo: GIORGIO VIERA / AFP / Getty Images
On August 29, 1987, the home of the Ray brothers, three HIV-positive Florida children, it caught fire in what was almost certainly a case of arson.
The three brothers, who are not in the house at the time, have already faced intense discrimination due to their HIV status,
Richard, Robert y Randy Raywho at that time were 10, 9 and 8 years old, were all born with hemophilia, a condition that required them to receive blood transfusions. As was all too common in the 1980s, before the government and medical establishment had fully addressed the extent of HIV/AIDS and how best to manage the epidemic, the brothers contracted HIV from seropositive blood donors.
Although it was widely known in the late 1980s that this was a common way of contracting HIV and that HIV affected people of all sexual orientations, many Americans still considered the virus a “gay disease”which aggravated the stigma of the disease with homophobia.
This was the case in the Rays’ hometown of Arcadia, Florida. When the children’s HIV status became public, they were shunned from their church and their friends and banned from attending school due to widespread misconceptions regarding how the virus might spread.
The Rays’ parents took DeSoto County to federal court, demanded that their children be allowed to attend, and ultimately won the case. Locals responded with a partial boycott of the boys’ school and threatening phone calls to the Rays., which led the family to sleep elsewhere. Although they prevented the fire, which allegedly started in the children’s room, they were forced to leave their hometown for good.
“Arcadia is no longer our home,” his father, Clifford Ray, told reporters the day following the fire, “that was made clear to us last night.”
Ricky Ray died of an AIDS-related illness in 1992, at the age of 15. In 1998, Congress passed the Ricky Ray Relief Act, establishing a fund to help pay for hemophiliacs who contracted HIV/AIDS. Robert Ray died in 2000 at the age of 22.
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