I guess it all comes down to whether this is a real condition or not. I don't really see how it can be, but if it can be scientifically proven then the question becomes what to do about it.

Hypothetically, if it is a real condition, I think that if you know you have this condition you need to take precautions to make sure you don't attack someone (lock yourself in when you sleep or something), and if you are negligent in that you should be held responsible for the consequences. But what if its the first time you find out you have it?

It doesn't make any sense though. Also, how hard can it be to fight off someone who is asleep? Can they see? Can they think and plan ahead? Can they react fast enough to block a kick to their privates?

This defense is absurd, period. If you have a medical condition that makes you rape people in your sleep, then what else are you capable of while sleeping? Murder? Are you going to get in your truck and kill someone head on on the highway? I guess then we need to take away your license and lock you up in an institution like we would a mentally ill person who assaulted or killed someone. You are still a threat to society. Of course, that is assuming the defense is real which I seriously doubt. If I were that lady I'd put a hit out on that sonofabitch or kill him myself and use the insanity defense based on my PTSD.

And what the hell is up with this part of it?

"Mrs McKenna, a middle-class mother of one whose husband holds a respectable full-time position, said the acquittal in June had left her feeling 'shocked and degraded'."

As if her husband's "respectability" is significant to how much we should care about her rape?

I have a hard time blaming someone for something they were unconscious for. Were there criminal cases brought against people for various acts committed while on Ambien? Vehicular negligence, that sort of thing? How did those turn out? (Seriously. I don't know)

This is tricky, because it's still rape from the victim standpoint--that is, I would never attempt to diminish the effect on the victim. But this isn't even a case of miscommunication or the perpetrator misunderstanding the meanings of his actions. In these cases, he literally doesn't know he's doing it, that the action is even taking place, and may be horrified to find out.

I have a hard time saying someone should bear the full force of the law for something they have no control over. Maybe, to prevent recurrence and abuse of the system, there should be a requirement for medical or psychiatric evaluation (whichever is appropriate) and treatment. Or maybe he should be required to be restrained while sleeping.

I just remembered there was a Law and Order SVU that started out with this plot (and then turned into a completely different one, like they do a lot). Some guy attacked his girlfriend's sister in his sleep because his girlfriend wasn't there to have sex with, apparently he always had sex with her while asleep. In that case he KNEW he had this disorder, it was documented and everything. They said they couldn't charge him with anything, but I think that if you know you have this disorder and you let your girlfriend's little sister sleep over without warning her, you should be liable for the consequences.

Seriously though, how good can someone who is unconcious be at the physical mechanics of attacking someone? I can see where they could start humping a person but if the victim dodged and ran away, how well could they react and hold someone down? Maybe I'm wrong because I don't know much about sleepwalking but it doesn't seem like you would have the best reflexes or coordination. Can a person who is sleepwalking SEE? (I usually think of sleep as eyes shut). I really don't know these answers, does anyone know?

And yeah, Ambien comes to mind too. Usually we hold people culpable for things they do while drunk, but you get drunk on purpose knowing you will be drunk. People taking Ambien might not have known it could have those effects (although I guess they should now).

I think I'll call bullshit on this.

I've done a lot of research on somnabulism (sleepwalking) and related conditions, and one common point is that people rarely remember it. There are people who even do things while sleepwalking that they can't while awake--such as speaking fluent French.

Granted, the story is scant on details, but if the man had no history of sleepwalking--and this is not something that just happens; it seems to be somthing that occurs only to specific people, how would he know to suspect that he had been sleepwalking when he attacked the woman?

And in any case, this shouldn't result in acquittal. If a person can rape while they're asleep with no control over their actions, they are clearly a danger to others--so they should be remanded to medical custody until their condition can be treated, suppressed, or cured. But this has been used as a defense since the sixties, when a man was acquitted of murder and arson because he claimed he must have been sleepwalking. Further, sleepwalking itself is not treated as a mental disorder, so a person can't be assigned to a mental ward.

Fucking dammit.

Yeah, I wonder if there is a way to prove that he couldn't have been sleepwalking, or otherwise prove that he must have been sleepwalking. How does one go about testing that sort of thing? I doubt psychiatric or psychological evaluations would entail that he was or wasn't sleepwalking when he raped her, but it certainly would help to determine if treatment is required, or if he needs to be restrained while sleeping. If nothing can prove that he was or was not aware of what he was doing, the state at least has a responsibility to make sure that it will work to prevent other 'sleeprapes' from occuring. Certainly Mrs McKenna needs reassurances that it will not happen again, and she deserves some sort of compensation for having her rights violated.

After a cursory internet examination of the evidence it seems pretty legit.

It's counter-intuitive because we think of sleep in terms of what we see; someone just lying somewhere. But sleep can also be categorized in terms of brain function that is happening at the time. Typically the brain turns off motor control and sensory input and removes them from what it's doing with REM sleep.

In the case here, you can prove pretty conclusively that people with this condition are in fact asleep, but are also performing other motor functions at the same time. People in studies conducted in university level health clinics showed normal sleep brain behavior, but also abnormal conscious motor control. The people in these studies can't just fake their brain waves.

I understand the frustration of people who want to go hurt someone when there is a social harm, but really, if there's no indication that a person is going to be violent, it's pretty blatantly unfair to punish them for something outside their control. The problem is, if you just start out by walking to the kitchen or something as an indication that you sleep walk, you're not going to start chaining yourself up every night. It would probably never occur to someone that they had a problem until something drastic happened.

Probably anyone who experiences something like this should have mandatory treatment as a precautionary measure, but inflicting punishment on them for something they didn't decide to do is cruel and unusual. Just try imagining how you would feel if you killed someone in your sleep and then woke up to face the consequences.

This is a real condition and is rightfully a defence. A Defendant should not be convicted for such an act where he/she did not have the intent to go along with it. It is akin to an accident.

Unfortunately, this does not lessen the impact that the victim feels but putting a person in jail for an act for which they are not morally culpable b/c they had no intent is wrong.

However, it should be criminal negligence when one knows that one has such a condition and does not take the proper precautions to avoid injuring another person.

I call bullshit on this too. Infuriating to say the least.

Furthermore, if you commit rape while you are asleep and have no control over it, you should be locked up or have your junk cut off.

I have to say that sleepwalking is a valid defence, but I'd like to know more about the evidence that the defence was based on. The article makes it sound like the only evidence was the accused's own assertion.

In Canada, there was a case where a guy got up in the middle of the night, got into his car, drove something like 26 km to his in-laws house, took a knife from the kitchen, and stabbed his father-in-law to death, and seriously wounded his mother-in-law. But in that case there was a personal and family history of somnambulism and other sleep disorders, and the accused was going through a really high-stress period in his life due to losing his job, and that could have triggered the incident. Plus there was evidence that he was very close with his in-laws.

So my point is, people can do crazy stuff in their sleep. But there should be evidence that they really were sleep walking.

If someone has such a condition, they are a danger to society. They should have mandatory medical treatment. Why didn't that happen? Assuming the sleepwalking defense is true, I hope this guy requests it. And I'm not happy to read yet another example of the media referring to rape as "having sex". Whether or not it was rape is not even in question!

The concept of unilateral involuntary rape might be unique to this circumstance, so I can see the difficulty in understanding it, but honestly, the amount of "I don't trust those doctors, they're just out to acquit rapists" talk here is kind of disturbing in itself.

You can be saddened by the fact that a woman was raped, but really, you should try to think carefully about this issue instead of just deciding based on your "gut instinct" that medical professionals and a jury of this man's peers just acquitted him on a whim.

Based on what I know, there is no way of determining after the fact whether the person was sleepwalking or not. Innocent until proven guilty.

I have a guy friend who has, in the past, awoken to find himself going down on his girlfriend, or straddling her. However, he has always woken up during it of his own accord, and if not, he can be woken up pretty easily. He tends to remember the whole thing very foggily in the morning. Also, he doesn't think his "sexsomnia" experiences have ever happened with a casual sex partner or friend, just girlfriends.

So I do think it's possible to start doing sexual stuff while sleeping. But I seriously doubt it would go very far without the guy waking up.

No more cases of people using this excuse are popping up now than they have in the past. Sleep walking has historically been a last chance defense. Shh, sometimes it's even true!

Legally speaking, if a person really is sleepwalking, what they do is not a crime as it lacks the element of intent (unless it's an offense that doesn't need intent). Rape would be one of those crimes.

I sleep with someone who occasionally has conversations in his sleep, sits up, stands up, walks around the house, and every once in a while goes outside and either gets something from his car or just sits in his car (maybe once or twice in 10 years). He usually wakes up when I talk to him or give him stern instructions such as "You're having a dream. Wake up. Come back to bed." It takes persistence because his waking-up process is not quick. My problem is that I'm usually half-asleep myself and don't have the presence of mind to immediately snap into instruction-giver mode myself.

So I believe that a severe form of this condition could make it harder for the person to wake up. Or if somebody doesn't know how to handle you when you're doing it. Or if they're not aware you're asleep. It's scary.

From a sociological perspective (rather than a legal one), maybe it's time to start an informational campaign with medical professionals, pharmacists, etc. The message: if you sleepwalk, you should take precautions as if it were any other infirmity - tell your partner what to do when you have an episode, take medications, whatever it takes. You don't want to wake up to find out you did something horrible.

The scary thing to me, is that since rape is defined as sex without consent, couldn't a person who uses this excuse counter sue for rape as well, since, if they aren't lying, they didn't necessarily consent to anything either? This, of course, means that not only can rape victims now be raped and not convict their rapists, but their rapists can now also counter sure them as rapists.

I don't doubt that somnambulism is a real condition that can cause the sleepwalker to do things they are not aware of: I was a very active sleepwalker as a child.

BUT, I've only found one case of a woman reportedly having sex while sleepwalking, yet can find a numerous men who've used the sleepwalking defense against accusations of rape, molestation, arson, murder, assault, etc. in every Google search. I found one doctor who says it occurs more frequently in men, but that seems difficult to prove, since the somnambulist has no memory. Google "sleep eating and women" and you'll find many more women with the condition and experts claiming it's more common in women. Interesting, to say the least...

I don’t give a flying fuck if he was actually sleep-walking. If a mentally disabled person rapes someone, they don’t get off scott-free. If a child rapes another child, they don’t get off scott-free. Why does this man? Whether he intended to rape the woman or not, he did and he should be penalized (a lesser penalty, maybe, but a penalty none the less), just like everyone else, even if he didn’t mean to do it.

And, I don't know what planet you folks live on, but people absolutely are punished for accidents that result in harm or death of another person, maybe not every time, but it's far from uncommon.

Rape is a crime that requires proof of intent. As horrible as it is for the victim, it sounds like a legitimate defense. I would think it would require competent expert testimony to be allowed. Ultimately the jury would have to be convinced.

The last link in the essay was to an even more horrible case where the defense was the victim was sleepwalking or dazed after an epileptic fit. I googled the name of the 52 year old homeless rapist and came up with the result. He plead out for a 10 year prison sentence. A published report said this in May of this year (I didn't keep the link):

"Prosecutors say the 24-year-old victim is a severe epileptic who sometimes seems confused after an intense seizure. Witnesses told police in November that they saw Ford assault the woman while she was walking near Interstate 71 in Cincinnati.

Ford has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and is HIV positive."

it's not crap. generally in criminal law mens rea (Latin for "guilty mind") is required for every element of the crime. this has nothing to do with whether there are different degrees of the crime.

a strict liability crime is one for which no mens rea is required. in the US, rape generally is not a strict liability crime, but statutory rape may be.

Seeing as it's likely damn near impossible to establish intent and thus guilt in these types of cases, would victims have a better chance in civil court (in the US)?

It looks like this case was badly handled. With no expert testimony and no evidence of a medical condition, it's pathetic that this guy got off.

That doesn't mean that there aren't medically substantiated cases, though. I went on the Pill after discovering that I initiate sex while asleep. My boyfriend sometimes can't tell whether I'm asleep or awake, because my eyes are open and I lucidly respond to questions. I've never raped him (he tends to wake up...) but it's something I have no control over, and don't see how someone who genuinely has this condition could possibly be held responsible unless he/she wilfully neglected to avoid a circumstance that they reasonably expected to occur. I mean, I probably did this with previous boyfriends, too, but never realised...

People do crazy stuff they don't mean to do when they sleepwalk. One of my professors cut her hair in her sleep once.

I don't think he deserves a long sentence and being convicted a rapist, but measures should be taken to ensure he doesn't sleep-rape again. That's what I find most astonishing: people acting like it's not a big deal since he was sleep-walking. Even if he was asleep, she still feels violated. He still raped her. Something tells me he could have apologized to her more than he did, but I don't know the whole story.

Also - and call me horribly cynical - one reason that I do not find it hard to see the sleepwalking defense as bullcrap is...men are constantly offering up ways to excuse themselves from a rape accusation, to say "No it wasn't rape, and I'm not guilty and here's why". Anything they think might make people find them innocent, they will use.

"I was drunk."
"She was drunk."
"She was wearing skimpy clothes."
"I bought her dinner."
"She flirted with me."
"We've had sex before."
"My meds made me do it."
"She's a prostitute."

And on and on and on. Anyone who reads this blog regularly or even occasionally knows the old "It wasn't rape because..." line. Rapists rarely admit that they are rapists and will latch on to anything they think will work. So why should "I was sleepwalking" necessarily be any different? Maybe it's real in a few very rare cases, but the more often it comes up, the less likely I will believe it.

Actually, sleepwalking has been used successfully as a defense in murder cases for centuries. And rightfully so. While you can argue negligence in cases where people know they have a history of violence while sleepwalking and take no precautions, it is impossible for someone sleepwalking to be aware of their actions.

Generally, people convicted of murder while sleepwalking are court-ordered to undergo treatment and sleep alone.

Both my wife and I suffer from somnambulism. While I have never tried to have sex with/rape her, I have punched her (fighting off aliens; reaching for cereal). She has bagged groceries, and checked for lizards and cheese slices under me.

In my opinion, any actions in sleep are involuntary. If, during sleep, your brain is doing anything other than having you lie there, it's an aberration, akin to hallucinating or epilepsy or similar uncommon brain functions. It's effectively an insanity defense.

The issue comes with whether someone is lying about having this condition. Without a history- which should be really easy, because sleepwalking is much more common in children, usually dissipating as you age- it's like a 'temporary' insanity defense, a defense that usually doesn't make much sense to me anyway.

"I was dead at the time."
(Eddie Izzard anyone?)

I have a friend with Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I have a good deal of sympathy for the "I don't know what the hell I was doing" defence. But, in order for it towork, I would assume that a legitimate medical documentation of the condition would be required for any kind of acquittal, along with possible injunctions to seek treatment for the condition.

Well ain't that some bullshit.
Unless he can provide documented proof, from a medical professional, that he has this condition, there is no way he should be acquitted. All he has to do is CLAIM to have been sleepwalking and that's reasonable doubt? What a wonderful development for rapists.

I'm in the middle of Criminal Law. The mens rea (intent) for forcible rape applies to the sexual act itself. Consent, or rather the lack thereof, is an attendant circumstance which has its own separate mens rea, typically recklessness (the defendant knew that there might not be consent, but consciously averred to that risk), but successful rape convictions have been upheld on essentially negligence as to the attendant circumstance (a reasonable person would have known that consent might not exist).

Generally, every crime requires some level of intent. The few offenses that are strict liability offenses that require no intent (such as traffic violations) are non-indictable offenses or non-criminal infractions, and so are handled differently. Assuming that in this case the sleepwalking claim is scientifically and medically legitimate, there was no criminal intent. There are crimes that address recklessness or negligence, such as involuntary manslaughter, but I've never heard of one for rape or sexual assault (e.g., there is no "criminally negligent rape").

What really tips my BS-meter in this case is that the sleepwalking defense wasn't brought up until the defense's closing arguments.

No expert witnesses, no sleep studies on the defendant to establish whether or not he had a sleeping disorder, and no time for the prosecution to bring in their own experts to evaluate the validity of this defense in this particular instance (for example, explaining the difference between true sleepwalking and being blackout drunk).

From what I've read on the subject as a whole I'm willing to consider sleepwalking a valid defense in certain cases, but it really alarms me that no proof or even reasonable background was needed for the jury to buy the defense. Just the possibility of it was enough to acquit a man of raping a woman in front of her child.

In the case of somnambulism one who is sleepwalking is not acting out of intent, and therefore could not be found guilty of a crime that requires intent, as so many have stated before. As someone who suffers from a few sleep-related conditions I can say that there are points in my life where I'm not 100% if I'm asleep or awake. Two nights ago I was reaching for a phone in a lucid dream and woke up to find my cell phone in my bed, though it was placed on the nightstand prior to going to sleep.

Of course, sexsomnia as it's being called is obviously rarer, but from a legal perspective it is theoretically a legitimate defense.

That said, in this case it is hard to understand exactly why the jury rendered this verdict, as we were not in the courtroom. Suffice it to say that "beyond reasonable doubt" makes a lot of people wary about simply handing down a guilty conviction when they have their doubts (as it should be).

Was this guy awake or asleep? We'll probably never know. It sucks that this woman got raped, and it sucks that there's a guy out there who's potentially a rapist, but that's the way our criminal justice system works. Sometimes people who might be guilty go free because of reasonable doubt, and that's the price to pay for living in a free society.

However, the inexcusable thing is the idea of not having this guy seek treatment whether or not he was actually sleepwalking. That he supposedly did this in his sleep says that he should be facing some sort of mandatory medical care to ensure this never happens again.

But as to the people calling BS you're just as much in the dark as those siding with the guy. Simply calling him a liar because he suggested he might have been sleepwalking is unfair, and charges guilt when one knows very few of the facts.

I want to say 'I don't have words to explain how angry this makes me' but that's a lie because I have lots of words, they're just inappropriate.
Rape is rape. Asleep? I don't care. Drunk? Again, don't care. She didn't consent. How the hell does he walk away from this without a sentence? I don't know. All I know is that it's wrong. Doesn't matter if he's lying. He should have a consequence because what he did hurt somebody else.
Do you think being raped would be somehow better for her if he was asleep than if he was awake? No, it's the SAME F'ING THING for her. ARGH!

Kendra, the intent here DOES MATTER. Otherwise a bad car accident is the same as murder.

Whether or not you care doesn't matter. The law makes it clear that in order to commit rape one must be having sex intentionally. When one is asleep one does nothing intentionally. If someone punches me while sleepwalking I've been hurt, and it doesn't feel good for me, but the one who has hit me didn't do it intentionally.

Consequences? Sure. Jail time? Not if he was sleepwalking.

If we look at justice only as a way of making things right for the person wronged then why don't we let everyone who is wronged decide the punishment for those that have transgressed against them?

A justice system should not be based on vengeance.

It's definitely worrying that he was completely acquitted. In the US (I've heard) a successful insanity defense results in mandatory treatment in lieu of incarceration or other punishment. Are there similar rules in the UK? Is there a reason they weren't applied to this case?

I just had an odd thought. Just for arguments sake.. Let's pretend that a person was sleep walking and engaged in sex with a willing partner. Would the willing partner be quilty of rape then? I would have to say yes, based on the idea that the one that is asleep would not be able to give actual consent.

Just wondering where the control debate lies in here. I would think a woman could use any means necessary to stop an attack, even shoot to kill. The potential problem is that many Liberals advocate gun control. Thoughts?

I once watched a woman who had no history of sleepwalking try to eat a bowl of Cheerios and bleach.

I didn't stop to wonder if she was malingering.

The man may have had no history of sleepwalking, but he also (I assume, and hope) had no history of rape. Treatment should be aggressive, residential, and involuntary, but the lack of culpability is more than plausible.

Intending no disrespect to people who do have to deal with parasomnias, this reminds me a bit too much of the fourteenth-century bishop who was found not guilty of attempted rape because the Devil was impersonating him. (True story. The final decision was that the Devil in the form of the bishop had made his way to a local woman's bedchamber, where he attempted to "entice" her; when she shouted for help, he hid under her bed. Found there by her servants, the Devil claimed that he was the bishop, even after he was taken to prison. But by the next morning the Devil had vanished from the cell and left the innocent bishop in his place.)

The sleepwalking defense? This sounds almost as ridiculous as the twinkie defense (cf. Dan White and his killing of Milk and Moscone). It is incomprehensible to me how anyone could subconsciously or unconciously violate another human.

Think of it like a person who has an epileptic seizure while driving and hits a pedestrian, traumatically amputating her legs. The drive doesn't consciously violate another human, yet the victim is just as traumatized. It's awful, but assuming the driver had no prior history of seizures and medical witnesses confirm the driver has the condition, there is no criminal (or civil) liability there.

The problem with the reported case is that there seemed to be little if any evidence of the defendant's prior sleepwalking history and no expert evidence that he had the condition at any time. It's a newspaper report, though, so we're filling in a lot of blanks. We don't know if there was other evidence to undercut her credibility and enhance his. From what we read it seems an unjust and outrageous result.

i would call bullshit on the sleep-rape defense..

Well... I am a sleepwalker, and I have attempted to have sex (with my girlfriend, who was in the same bed as me) while I was asleep. While that's not quite the same as committing an act of rape, I think that a lot of the commenters here have failed to understand the nature of sleep disorders. They aren't always benign, surface-level sleep disturbances; on one occasion, I got out of bed, put on my clothes, left the house, walked down to the local beach (about half a mile away), dug a hole in the sand about a foot deep, and walked back home, without at any point waking up. Trying to judge people and their serious sleep disorders without a) having had one, or b) a five year degree on neuroscience or sleep therapy is not really conducive.

On the other hand, I'm sure that this can be used fraudulently as a defence, and being vigiliant towards that possibility is essential. Happily, sleep disorders can often be diagnosed, and court cases should ideally be prepared to reflect this. But I get very worried when I hear people talking about sleep disorders as if they were subject to rationality. I'm lucky; if I attempted anything funny in my sleep then my girlfriend would do exactly what she did last time, which was to push me away hard then prod at me with increasing force until I woke up. But sometimes, not knowing what you're going to do when you fall asleep is terrifying.

Interestingly we actually discussed about sleep disorders last night in one of my counseling classes.

On sleepwalking... elaborate events aren't a part of it. You might get up to make some mac-n-cheese, but you might only put the pasta in the pot and leave out the water (or vice versa).

Also important... you would not do anything while sleepwalking that you would not do when you were awake. So, you wouldn't get up go to the neighbor's house and rape her, unless you would do that when you were awake. Or you wouldn't roll over and force sex on someone who is saying no and pushing you away unless you would do that when you were awake!

What a shit defense.

Voluntary or involuntary, whatever. This is why I have a dog on my bed and a pistol beside it.

I would think a woman could use any means necessary to stop an attack, even shoot to kill. The potential problem is that many Liberals advocate gun control. Thoughts?

Well, gun control is not the same as forbidding guns, no matter what the NRA tries to tell you. No one needs an assault weapon to shoot a rapist... a .22 will do well enough. No one needs a concealed carry permit to shoot a rapist in her own *home*, and things like trigger locks protect people from, for example, shooting themselves in the head because they thought the gun under their pillow was a phone. (True story, BTW.) I don't know of any state where a woman with no criminal record or history of mental illness is not permitted to buy a small gun and keep it appropriately locked in her nightstand drawer.

That being said... When a woman does shoot a rapist, or her abusive husband, very often the judges throw the book at her because women aren't "supposed" to be killers, and people very often disbelieve that women who say they were raped actually were raped. Tasers, however, are legal, and sold with the understanding that they generally don't kill people. So a woman who wants a weapon to defend herself from a rapist would be much better off with a taser. For one thing, her young kids are unlikely to take it to school and kill their classmates (again, true story), or shoot her with it (true story), or shoot themselves (thousands of true stories). And in a circumstance like this, if the guy was actually sleepwalking he did not deserve to be killed... but tasering him would probably have woken him up.

So I don't think gun control really stands in the way of women protecting themselves from rapists, so much as common sense and self protection (if you get a gun out you *must* use it, otherwise the rapist can get it away from you and kill you with it... and if you're not conditioned to be a killer, which most women aren't, it's very hard to shoot). Non-lethal weaponry such as tasers and mace are better choices for stopping rapists anyway, as women can use those without hesitating, won't end up going to jail for life because they killed someone with them, and don't have to worry about being killed *with* them.

Without expert testimony and sleep testing it is at best a weak defense and he should not have gotten off... although without all the facts that is not for me to determine.

HOWEVER it is a completely valid disorder. I've worked in the field (sleep diagnostic computer software geek) for 8 years. Sleep walking could be the problem but he could also have REM Behaviour Disorder. RBD can be diagnosed with proper sleep tests. People with this sleep disorder have killed/endagered themselves or others. They definitely need treatment but jail time? This is a medical disorder and these people have NO intent to harm.

--jaw drops--
Sleep sex? Are you fucking kidding me? What's next? "Oh I was drunk when I raped her. It's okay, because I wasn't myself."
When is the American court system going to realize:
1) rape is not excusable
2) the victim is not to blame, even if she's naked
3) altered states (in either the victim or predator) are not an excuse-- rape is rape.

Personally I do not believe this is a real condition. From my personal experience, my sleep-sexing bf is pretty easy to control. Can a sleepwalker exert the force necessary to hold a struggling, screaming woman down? I might not be as strong as my boyfriend, but I've actually had 'sleep-sex' (as I like to call it) where he iniatiated it and couldn't remember it in the morning. Even if I'm wrong, I still don't believe it's a real condition.
Oh, and the intent for rape? Always present. Basically if two people are having sex and she says, 'ow, that hurts, stop' and he doesn't stop, his intent is to continue sex and reach his climax via forcing her. Force+sex=rape. The intent develops as soon as she doesn't want to have sex anymore and he continues anyway.

Much of this story does seem fishy as I realized above.

But if you read the article, the woman's first protest was when she realized what was going on, and threw him off. There was no struggle or screaming.

THOSE THINGS DO NOT HAVE TO BE PRESENT FOR RAPE, I hasten to add. But those who are claiming that the sleep-sex defense is ludicrous are citing things like "once she starts to struggle, the intent is there" or "a sleeping man can't hold a woman down" are actually making the defendant's case for him, since none of those things happened. The woman was able to stop the man as soon as she knew what was going on, by her own account.

I'm still not sure what happened, and it's not up to me to decide. But the disqualification of "sleep disorder" is not going to come from the scenarios commenters are describing.

So what's gonna happen when I "sleepwalk" in and cut Jason's balls off then?

Truth is that "sleepwalking" is a defence that basically says "I was not responsible for my actions because I was experiencing abnormal mental behaviour" and the response is "fine, that makes you not guilty, however you clearly do have a serious and so far as we know untreatable mental disorder so you should be permanently detained in a secure hospital or care home to prevent you being a further danger to the public".

There have also been cases of people using the sleepwalking defense for homocide. Whether it's homocide or rape, I call bullshit however.

A few things I've learned googling "somnambulism"

You CAN wake a sleepwalker. It's not dangerous.

They do this with their eyes open but they are not awake.

It's treatable with medication.

Personally I think the rapists are trying to avoid responsibility, it's what rapists do. But even if they ARE sleepwalking, well, obviously if they engage in this behavior beyond they're control, they are a threat to society and should be locked up, in a mental institution at least if not a prison. Most sleepwalkers engage in commonplace activities, if they have something unconscious driving them to rape in their sleep, they obviously still have a deep-seated problem that needs to be addressed. We don't let a sociopath off the hook for their crimes because of their mental disorder, why a sleep-rapist?

I am a guy who has previously attempted to begin sexual things with a bed partner while I was asleep.

Let me preface this by saying this: no still meant no. It didn't take much for me to wake up and realize what was going on. This "sexsomnia" usually consisted of some disorganized grinding (when I'm awake, I'm never that..um..blunt). It happened maybe about a dozen times while I was younger (late teens, early twenties) but it always stopped once a "not now" or similar phrase/action came up.

I've found this extremely embarrassing and have been open with partners about it. I took to sleeping with alot of clothes on and trying not to "spoon" to avoid this. Anyway, this hasn't happened in years.

But, I don't think equating 'sexsomnia' with 'rapesomnia' is anywhere near correct. A sex-drive and a "rape-drive" are different. All it took for me to stop or wake-up was someone saying "stop", "not now", etc.

When I've been awake I've never raped anyone either, so maybe I'm not the best case study. Personal opinion: Whether someone is conscious of the act or not doesn't matter at all, and it shouldn't in court either.

I am a guy who has previously attempted to begin sexual things with a bed partner while I was asleep.

Let me preface this by saying this: no still meant no. It didn't take much for me to wake up and realize what was going on. This "sexsomnia" usually consisted of some disorganized grinding (when I'm awake, I'm never that..um..blunt). It happened maybe about a dozen times while I was younger (late teens, early twenties) but it always stopped once a "not now" or similar phrase/action came up.

I've found this extremely embarrassing and have been open with partners about it. I took to sleeping with alot of clothes on and trying not to "spoon" to avoid this. Anyway, this hasn't happened in years.

But, I don't think equating 'sexsomnia' with 'rapesomnia' is anywhere near correct. A sex-drive and a "rape-drive" are different. All it took for me to stop or wake-up was someone saying "stop", "not now", etc.

When I've been awake I've never raped anyone either, so maybe I'm not the best case study. Personal opinion: Whether someone is conscious of the act or not doesn't matter at all, and it shouldn't in court either.

Sorry, just read the full article and realized it was not his "partner" as I had assumed, nor were they sleeping in the same bed.

Also, the Ford case is obviously a rape.

Involuntary manslaughter still has the element of intent required for conviction. In this sense, it is not a true accident but is the result of negligence or recklessness.

As to the sleepwalking/sleepsex defence, do not assume that a Defendant must establish a prior history for this defence to work. Every sleepwalker has a first time and it is not always in childhood.