A 33 year old married woman invited another couple to their home in England for a barbeque in late July 2007. The other couple had a fight, at which point the female left. The 37 year old estranged husband was offered to sleep on a sofa. The 33 year old female host fell asleep in her nine-year old daughter’s room and was awakened by her daughter sometime in the night. The girl had called for her mother when she saw the man “hovering over” her mother. In fact, the man was raping her. His DNA was collected.

This week, the man was acquitted of rape on the grounds that he had been sleepwalking. The man had no prior medical history of sleepwalking, and he is not the first man in to be acquitted in English courts on these pretenses. The law defines a defendant as guilty of rape if the attack was intentional. Juries have been convinced by several charismatic attackers that they were totally unaware of their actions and therefore innocent.