On the issue of ‘moral recklessness’ in ‘sexsomnia’ men

Published: Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Vera Baird QC, Co-Director of Astraea: Gender Justice (Research and Education), has been looking at recent rape acquittals where the defence was 'sexsomnia'.

A relatively new rape defence is that some men can be wholly without responsibility for sexual assaults because they may be unconscious and asleep while having sex - sexomnia.

In at least four British cases, defendants have been acquitted of rape in this way and freed.

The acquittals raise several wider issues.

In modern life that friends and even acquaintances of opposite sexes stay overnight in each other's homes.

In two of these cases, the men said nothing about the specific danger each knew he presented.

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