A man was cleared of rape today because he suffered from a rare sleep disorder.
The 32-year-old man was charged with the sexual assault of two 17-year-old girls in 2011. But Glostrup District Court today chose to dismiss the charges against him because he suffers from sexsomnia, which causes those inflicted to engage in sexual acts while asleep.
“It is the first time that someone has been acquitted under these circumstances in Denmark,” the man’s lawyer, Andro Vrlic, told Ritzau. “There have been a couple of cases in Sweden and Norway.”
According to Ekstra Bladet tabloid, the man has always claimed that the he was asleep when the incident took place but he was charged by police who did not believe his explanation.
The man was subsequently tested and found to have the condition, which affects around one percent of the population.
“According to his explanation, he did not know that there was anything wrong with him,” the prosecutor, Martin von Bülow, told Ekstra Bladet. “But when former girlfriends told him that they had experienced something similar while he slept, he sought out a sleep specialist [who tested him].”
Von Bülow added that the testimony from the girls supported the man’s claim that he was asleep when he touched one and made sexual motions against the other. He added that given that the man’s defence was supported both by the victims and by experts in court, he was not surprised by the acquittal.
“We had a professor in court who concluded that the fluctuations in the man’s brain patterns matched others who suffered from sexsomnia,” von Bülow told Ekstra Bladet. “It’s not something that can be faked.”
