OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian court has acquitted a man accused of raping a sleeping woman after he said he was also asleep at the time.

The 18-year old woman, who had gone to sleep dressed in trousers and a sweater on a sofa after a party with friends, awoke to find the 34-year-old man having sex with her. The man said he was woken by her screams for help.

"He said that he was asleep and the majority of the judges found that they could not rule out the possibility," defense lawyer Christian Riig told NRK public radio on Thursday.

The three-judge panel in the court in Inderoy, west Norway, acquitted him by a 2-1 margin because of doubts about whether he had been conscious.

Riig declined to speculate about how the man, who had been drinking, could have had sex in his sleep, apparently after undressing the woman. But he said an ex-partner of the man had testified by telephone that similar things had happened to her.

© Reuters 2004. All Rights Reserved.

[ 12-09-2004, 06:12 PM: Message edited by: Dreamer128 ]

I watched a show on Discovery once, about people with sleep disorders. There were people there who were beating their spouses in their sleep, breaking stuff in the room, and once somebody even stabbed a person in their sleep. They were all really traumatised because of this (both the person that got beaten and the sleeping person).

They showed recordings of what happens at night when they sleep (when they were alone, of course, and under surveillance), and they really did weird stuff around the room in their sleep... It's a bad sleeping disorder. So it's possible he really was asleep. [img]graemlins/uhoh1.gif[/img]

Maybe he just dreamed it. ;) :D

wow.. that's weird...scary even...XD

There was a story over here in Australia about a woman who each night roamed the streets of sydney in in sleep having sex with people.

Sounds like something similar.

So I guess a person's sex drive is actually in their subconcious? [img]graemlins/1ponder.gif[/img]

Weird. Kind of worries me though, considering I have a bad sleeping disorder that revolves around depression, think I sleep walked once because of it.

I have heard of weird excuses for a crime but this one is the worst... how the hell do you undress another person when you are asleep?

If I had been that judge he would have goten a triple live prison, two for raping the girl, one for lying to the court...

and few extra years for being a norwegian but thats a diffrent issue .

This is what bothers me. Are you not also responsible for your subconscious actions?

BTW, this seems pretty intense for GD. Consider moving to CE?

..guess we'll never really know the truth..

Hey Guys,

I'm going to move this over to Current Events. This type of discussion is a bit heavy for the GD part of the forum

Cheers!

[ 12-09-2004, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: T-D-C ]