Sexsomnia case man cleared of rape

Yahoo News wrote:

Sexsomnia case man cleared of rape

A man accused of raping a teenage girl has walked free from court after successfully arguing he suffered from sexsomnia.

Stephen Lee Davies, 43, of Pembroke Dock, west Wales, claimed he was innocent because he could not stop himself from having sex while asleep.

A jury at Swansea Crown Court took just over an hour to accept his version of events and find him not guilty.

Davies was cleared after a sleep consultant gave evidence at the trial confirming that what Davies said was probably true.

His wife and a former partner also gave evidence detailing how they became used to being "groped" in the night while sleeping with him. They said he would have sex with them in his sleep and remember nothing the next day.

Davies went on trial at the end of last month accused of raping a 16-year-old college student who stayed overnight at his home.

She had gone to sleep on his bed in the early hours of September 7 2009, using his room because it was cooler. Davies was already asleep in the bed and told the court he had no idea that she was there.

The teenager awoke in the night to find Davies having sex with her, the jury heard. The following day he sent her text messages asking her if anything had happened.

Dr Chris Idzikowski, head of Edinburgh Sleep School, gave expert evidence at the trial. He said that sexsomnia affects mostly deep-sleeping men: "Sexsomnia is instinctive behaviour, they are not conscious at the time."

This whole episode was preventable in so many ways it's unbelievable.

Thought it might trigger some debate and good puns though.

Sexsomnia ... seriously?

Either the defense counsel was very convincing, or that is one gullible jury.

Even if he seriously suffers from that condition, why on earth would he and his wife then allow an underage girl to share a bed with him? At the very least that makes them guilty of criminal neglect...

She's 16 - she's not underage. Not over here.

And he didn't know she was there - she didn't enter his bedroom until he was asleep.

Of course, it would be interesting to know where the wife was. And exactly why the 16 year old was staying the night.

Wouldn't he wake up if you whacked him hard enough? Screamed in his ear?

Then again - this is Wales. No sheep is safe. Not even when they're asleep.

Apparently it's a real condition...

If this bloke knows he's got a "problem" then he ought to wear something to bed that makes things awkward, like a back-to-front onesie

Oh I dunno. People do strange things in their sleep. If they can work doors and locks, I imagine they can wiggle their way out of a pair of jammies no problems.

I still reckon it's not normal for a 16 year old girl to wander into a bloke's bedroom and lie on the bed to sleep. No way in hell would I have done that when I was 16.

I'd believe it.

I had a roommate who would sleepwalk. It was really funny at first because he would run into things, scream, cry, etc. My friends and I thought it was a riot.

It was funny until the night I felt a sudden shift in weight in my bed and opening my eyes to my roommate mounting me. Yeah. So there I am with my roommate straddling me, god knows about what he is going to do. I wasn't really ready to find out, either. Needless to say he went flying across the room waking up saying "oh my god, what happened?"

Never liked the kid to begin with but I always tried to be friendly. That certainly put the nail in that coffin. I didn't really sleep easy for the last two months of that semester.