It's ruled sleep sex (not sexual assualt...but "sexsomnia" - WTF!?)

It's ruled sleep sex
By NATALIE PONA, TORONTO SUN

It wasn't a sexual assault -- it was sleep sex.

In an unusual case in a Scarborough, Ontario, courtroom, Jan Luedecke was acquitted of sexual assault after a judge ruled he was asleep during the attack -- a disorder known as "sexsomnia."

"This is indeed a rare case ... His conduct was not voluntary," said Justice Russell Otter, as Luedecke's victim shook, sobbed and then left the courtroom.

The judgment has outraged women's groups.

"This is infuriating. It's another case of the courts not taking a woman seriously, adding yet another list to the list of excuses which men use for sexual assault," said Suzanne Jay, of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres.

<SNIP>

http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Law/2005/11/30/1330499-sun.html

That sounds made up. That sounds like that name of a bad porno movie. This is hideous.

..Gee...I usually have the Woman fall asleep on Me. :)

wave charts showing he was in REM during the act? i don't get it.

at least that is how it once worked. I'm not advocating for the guy, but perhaps the prosecuter couldn't prove that it didn't happen the way the guy claimed. That happnes in a lot of weird cases.

therefore it is the defense that must make the case. If someone is claiming "not guilty by reason of insanity" they are admitting they did the crime but they are saying they weren't responsible for their actions. As the presumption is that an adult is responsible for their actions it is up to the defense to show why that should not be the case.
Same thing here.

He was sleepwalking, and sleepwalkingly he put a condom on, then he sleepwalkingly removed clothes from the target area of his victim. Then sleepwalkingly he screwed her.

Even if it made me think for a minute there's no way I'd buy that.

which is hard enough to do when you're awake

He should have used the twinky defense!

I had an ex-gf who used to sleepwalk a lot.

I've literally watched her doing way more complicated things than that while completely asleep. It's really creepy and frightening when you see it first hand. And even more so for her -- she's woken up before in some very unusual and potentially dangerous places.

it has happened more than once. It was very strange the first time it happened. I have also called her late at night and she has answered the phone and talked with me before I realized that she was asleep.

and no guy I know likes condoms. Condoms are very inhibitory to the urge in question. It's just a little too much of a stretch --too much of a stretch even allowing for a reservoir tip--for me to believe that an unconscious male would pause to put on his party hat before commencing his somnambuporking.

maybe eventhough they don't like condoms, it's just become a habit to always wear one during sex.

If you don't mind, of course.

:7 That's funny!

You get out of bed, go downstairs, open the fridge, etc...

and when you wake-up in the morning you're surrounded by left-over pieces of raw meat or a half-eaten bar of soap.

In fact, my mom caught him red-handed.

that sleep rape is an altogether different kettle of fish.

When I was 10 yrs old, I sleptwalked down a flight of narrow stairs, undid two locks on the front door, walked outside barefoot in my tighty-whities in 40 degree weather, and walked around the dairy barn looking for an open door. I remember I dreamt there was a party inside and I wanted to go in. Eventually I went back in the house, closed the front door, walked back up the stairs, and fell back asleep in my bed. None of this woke me up completely. If it weren't for the trail of muddy footprints, I would have been sure it was all just a weird dream.

I did it myself at least once. And I also walked down stairs as a kid while sleepwalking. I've seen a nephew of mine sleepwalk, also walking down and back up stairs. But there is a common element in our stories that's missing from his. We acted without inhibitions normal to waking life, which is common. I peed in a desk on that occasion when I sleepwalked. You walked outdoors without dressing, which also flouts normal inhibitions, and my nephew--well never mind what he did. But as is also common with sleepwalkers, there are big inaccuracies in what we're doing while asleep. A desk is not a toilet but apparently I didn't understand that similar is not identical while I was stalking the night with my bladder full. You thought there was a party going on in the barn, and you also failed to dress although it was cold outside. My nephew was sleepwalking, I could tell, because his question to me made no sense, even when I could understand the words he was mumbling. He asked the same question repeatedly after I gave an answer. We all made mistakes of such a magnitude that anyone observing us would guess that we weren't in our right minds but sleepwalking.

This Canadian guy however, is a super sleepwalker--sleepshagger I should say. He gets it all right without mistakes--he takes off clothes, he gets Tab A in Slot B, he has the foresight to go to sleep next to a passed out female without any other people around (very convenient that). But more importantly, he even engages in highly inhibited behavior--he puts on a condom--while fulfilling the Prime Directive, the most urgent impulse known to man. The impulse to engage in intercourse with any available females, hopefully but not necessarily attractive, is so powerful and dangerous that it is usually checked with commensurately strong inhibitions. And it is difficult enough to get men to wear condoms when they are wide awake and listening. We are asked to believe that as a somnambulist this individual has slipped his normal wakeful inhibitions, so much so that he'll jump on whatever female genitalia chance has placed near him--but we're also supposed to believe that this wild caveman remembers to put on a condom first before carrying off his wench to roger her? Doesn't that contradict the claim that he was acting without normal inhibitions? As a lesser support to this argument notice that he also doesn't make any ludicrous mistakes about the situation before his unfocussed eyes. He doesn't think the woman passed out near him is a bank robber that he has to stop. Or his mommy. He sees her as an available female partygoer, more or less as she would usually appear to a usual guy at the party if she were vertical, and he wants to do the usual horizontal mommy-daddy dance with her, and apparently he goes about it with no less aplomb than he would if he were awake. He doesn't forget to remove his or her clothes the way you forgot to put on clothes before going to that cow soiree in the barn. He doesn't try to have his way with her handbag or shoe. If he did anything strangely amiss that would give away the fact that he was sleepwalking, no one was conscious there to witness it. Besides maybe himself. So basically all we have is his word that he becomes Casanova when in a deep state of sleep. And that he has said the same thing about himself before to women he's known.
To me this is a weak weak defence.

He does everything, as far as we know, just like a wide awake date rapist would do it. He takes an unconscious victim and uses a condom so as not to leave conclusive proof of his intercourse with her. But she woke up. Given the severity of the offence it's difficult for me to imagine letting him off on the basis of an excuse of incapacity. But I'm not a judge in Canada.

which I VERY sincerely doubt, then I do agree with the judge.

But I don't think he was asleep.

I have a friend who sleepwalks on occasion. One year he went to Germany (his fiance was a German language teacher, and took the class there), He started sleepwalking, left the hotel wandering asleep, and wound up in a fenced, guarded military compound, and woke up surrounded by German Shepards. They didn't attack because they sensed something wasn't right.

We've gone on golfing trips, and he's wandered into other hotel rooms, and people come in to find him sleeping in their beds. And I've witnessed him do even stranger things while sleepwalking.

I don't know much about sleepwalking, but I know that a person isn't in control of themselves.

So, if this is actually what happened, I don't think the guy did anything wrong.

But I REALLY don't believe that was the case.

Still, stranger things have certainly happened.

What kind of freaky universe are we living in, if someone can rape a woman and still do nothing wrong? And please, he put on a freaking condom.
Why in the world did he put on a condom, if he was having sex in his sleep? How in the world did he know to put on a condom while sleeping?
Completely ridiculous.

Well put.

The article states that he had sex with several other women prior to the event. I dare assume that he used condom when he was with them, so it could it be that his subconscience told him to remember the condom?

Why am I not surprised that some enterprising felon and his enterprising attorney would come up with this?

My patience with the male of the species is officially ended. Not that that means anything.

:grr:

And the fact that the judge bought it!!! Well, my brother owns some land near the Everglades .... Wonder if Kobe ever thought of using this one?

that's a cast iron skillet to the head

"I was sleep cooking, your Honor. I must have slammed the skillet down too hard on what I thought was the stove eye while I was still asleep."

Consider the case of Kenneth James Parks.

His stepson climbed up on the couch with him and got groped. The kid admitted that my partner was asleep. The case was not dismissed, and he took a plea.

The sex offender registry had only just recently passed and was never mentioned during the discussion of his plea, either by his lawyer or the prosecution. His lawyer advised him to take the plea. HE had already been paid about $20,000.

No money left. Plea entered.

I'm not saying my partner has this condition (although there have been times he's groped me in his sleep), but it's what happened, by the victim's own admission.

Pleas cannot be appealed. Sex offenses cannot be expunged.

I won't talk about the future consequences from his point of view when this all went down.

you don't even have to be aware of a specific body in bed with you to do that. Even frottage while asleep to the point of orgasm I could believe as unintentional.

...but this guy removes clothes his and hers, (we're talking zippers, elastic bands, buttons) and puts on a rubber (took it out of his wallet unless he just walks around with one in his hand all day) and he's still asleep during all this? No fucking raping way.

It's true that people actually do things that are fairly complicated while sleepwalking, but it's somehow different. Less complicated and goal oriented it seems than what this guy was up to. When I was very little, I walked downstairs while asleep and peed in the drawer of a desk. (Or that's what I was told.) My nephew once surprised me by appearing on the landing of the stairs well past his bedtime, and asking me something very garbled (i think it was about where his father was). I replied to the question, but he just asked it again after more mumbling speech. It dawned on me because of the way he looked around not really seeing things or me, and the oddball nature of the question and his repetitions, and some other oddities of his behavior that won't be described, that he must be sleepwalking. Eventually he walked back upstairs to bed. His mother later confirmed to me that they know he sleepwalks.

Walking on stairs while asleep is fairly complicated behavior. If you can do that without tripping and smashing your face on the ground, and apparently I did it and my nephew did too...I don't know... what's the upper limit of things people can do in a somnambulist state?

There's no way he got a condom out, ripped open the package, and put it on after taking off their clothes. If his former girlfriends bought the story, though, that's probably why the jury bought it.

Just cause you've never experienced it, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen.

DH talked me through it... I was at my sister's when her network went down. DH had set it up. He got the call from me, walked me through rebuilding it (about an hour conversation)...

And refused to believe that he'd done so until the cell phone bills came in because he cannot remember it.

A condom is a piece of cake in comparison, especially for younger men who have had it drilled into their heads that sex without one is Not Allowed.

"*sigh* Sexlexia."

Futurama: Still ahead of the curve 2 years after its death and counting.

Sorry, but I just can't buy that he was asleep and managed to put on a condom.

Uh-uh.

It's not weird that someone might get up to fornicatin' while asleep. From what I know people often do things in the way of satisfying a natural need/craving while sleepwalking or in a borderline dreamstate.
What's sort of wrong with the story is the employment of the condom. A rapist might do that premeditatively to prevent his later identification. If he was raping a sleeping victim, a condom would be perfect for his purpose: the victim can't identify him and he leaves no conclusive evidence behind to identify himself. But sleepwalkers generally go right to whatever it is they want to do. Inhibitions present when awake are often not observed when sleepwalking. Walking is a complicated action but a natural action--in fact if you had to really think about it you probably couldn't do it. Eating is a very natural action. Urinating is a natural function and sleepwalkers often fulfill it, but typically in incorrect places for urination. Humping is also a very natural instinctive action for those who hump. Indeed it's such an instinctive action that it's difficult to conceive of the unconscious mind registering a desire to hump and then interposing obstacles or pre-conditions on carrying out the action.
I have a friend let's say who's had more humping dreams than he could begin to count--dreams in which dream blends with reality as sleep gives way to wakefulness. He wakes up from such a dream humping away like there's no tomorrow, alas usually waking up before...before he'd like to wake up. This friend of mine has never had a dream he can recall in which the act of humping involved donning a latex slicker before stepping out into the storm. There's nothing natural about putting on a condom--it's not like eating or humping or urinating, and it gets quite in the way of satisfying the urge which led you to hump in the first place.
Is it believable that a sleepwalker would sleephump another person who just happened to be unconscious too--and took the precaution of wrapping his willy before getting on with it?
It's just a little too premeditated sounding to me.

I'm not going to comment on the ruling or the case, because I haven't even HEARD about it, but I will say this; You're looking at his actions through the eyes of someone who sleeps normally. You think putting on a condom is premeditated and too complicated to do when you're sleeping because you don't have this "condition."

I have a co-worker who got up, got in her car, drove to work, punched the clock, worked for about 2.5 hours, and went home and got in bed. This was at 3 AM. She had no recollection. The only proof was her timecard, and her computer login. Now, if that's not complicated, nothing is.

I'm offering absolutely no defense for this person, because, again, I don't even know what's going on, but you seem to be dead-set against even the POSSIBILITY of his story being true, and I think it's because you're thinking of sleep like someone who sleeps normally.

Just sayin'

using a condom during sex, that is, then the muscle memory is there, just like your colleague. If he never used a condom with her, or if it'd been a long time, then that's different.

From my understanding of sleep disorders like this, people tend to engage in behaviours they know, if the person doesn't cook, they're not going to prepare a three course meal, for instance. But a carpenter might do woodwork, employing power tools even, something I can't do awake, because his nervous system knows what to do.

So, what, does he have a license to rape? I guess so, considering he got away with it on numerous occasions before-since his 4 girlfriends testified he did it to them as well. I wonder what else he can come up with? Robbing banks in his sleep? Why the hell not?

You're exactly right, which is why I have no comment on the case itself because I don't know anything about it. I'm in the middle of writing a term paper and get my 10 year old to go to damn BED!

Working title for movie:

"I'm asleep and I AM Happy to See You"

Song:

"Don't Wake me 'til It's Over"

:eyes: :eyes: :eyes:



Gimme a break.

been able to wake him up. My hubby sleepwalks and has been known to pull the covers over me and tell me to be quiet because someone is walking by our window (on the 2nd floor), he's also put on his toolbelt and nailed a piece of panelling over a doorway that he thought was letting in too much light...And the worst one, he insisted he had to get out of someplace and he put his hand thru a glass window. NOTHING wakes you up as fast as glass breaking at the foot of your bed.

It's for that reason that I now sleep lightly enough that a fly farting would wake me up. When the kids were little, I was afraid he'd mistake their cries and hurt them unintentionally and unknowingly. His sleepwalking comes back when stress at work gets very high. His eyes are open and he can hold a conversation, though you'd know something was wrong - it doesn't make much sense, like "The pink elephant on the mailbox doesn't do it alone."

No guns in our house! When an incident happens, I try not to wake him up, but get him back to bed and reassure him that everything is OK. Yes, I was scared the night that he wrapped me in the blankets and yes, It would have been very possible for him to really hurt me.

Another time, when we were on a week-end golf trip, got up in the middle of the night. Went into the kitchen and started pissing on the refrigerator. The owner of the house heard him get up and followed him, and caught him "dick in hand" pissing. It took him about 30 minutes to wake him up and make him clean it up. The whole time he was having a conversation, and with dick still in hand, denying it.

I was trying to sleep on the couch throughout the whole ordeal.

I've dealt with sleepwalkers too. In my 10 years in the Navy I encountered a few of them (they're supposed to get discharged for that never saw that happen) and my sister does it on occasion. Yes, they do strange things and are capable of quite a lot. But they CAN be woken up (carefully) or not woken up but led back to bed. If she tried to wake him or get him off her and he continued to "sexnambulate" or whatever, I ain't buyin' it.

to "find him having sex with her" unless she was a "sexomniac" as well.

The article says she fell asleep on a couch; which sounds like she was still dressed. How come sex woke her up, but removing key articles of clothing did not? Or was she not wearing those articles?

Was she drugged? The article makes no mention of this.

There is much more to this story than has been written. That is the only thing we can be certain of.

alcoholic beverages were likely involved.

Do you bring in other sexual partners who say the guy slept through sex? Once in a while? Regularly? Routinely?

It's things like this ruling that are responsible for making freepers.

If there is a standard of requiring multiple previous sex partners to testify that would cut down on some bogus attempts to use this defense.

Either:

1) He rapes people all the time and then says, "Hey, I was asleep."

or

2) He can bring multiple people in to say, "Yeah, he'd occasionally try to have sex with me in his sleep, but then I'd wake him up and he'd stop and be okay."

What I think would help a defense like this would be if the guy had been seeing a doctor about this before being accused of a rape.

For example, if he has medical records showing that he'd been to a sleep lab before the accusation and sought treatment.

Other mitigating circumstances would be if he at least took reasonable precautions to protect those around him.

For example, "Hey, I should warn you that I sometimes try and have sex in my sleep. You should lock your door before you go to bed."

Who has that kind of money?

I'm serious.

And alot of people don't realize that they can get help for this problem. It makes some worry that they are so weird, that they will be locked up in a mental ward.

1) Innocent people will go to jail because they are either afraid or unable to get help for their condition.

2) Guilty people may go free by using similar conditions as a smokescreen.

In the absence of an established medical history before the fact, if I was on a jury, I would demand an extensive level of proof before letting someone walk away from any crime by saying, "I must have been asleep."

Nobody should have to live with a terrifying sleep disorder, but also nobody should ever be allowed to get away with rape.

<snip>

The woman, who can't be named, had fallen asleep on a couch. She woke up to find him having sex with her. She pushed him off, then reported the rape to police.

<snip>

Luedecke claimed he fell asleep on the same couch and woke up when he was thrown to the floor.

More:
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Law/2005/11/30/1330499-sun.html

It doesn't sound like he fought her and forced her, and managed to sleep through a violent attack.

I have all the sympathy in the world for the poor woman, but I would say it sounds plausible that the man's story is true.

Now, if she described being held down and struggling and fighting and slapping, and he somehow managed to stay asleep, I'd call 100% bullshit.

But the victim (yes, even without an intentional assailant she's still a victim) slept through as much of the assault as the man did.

She woke-up to find him having humping her, and as soon as she noticed, she shoved him off the couch where he woke-up and said, "Hey, I'm on the floor and there's a condom on my penis."

Will this defense be abused in the future? Yes, it will.

Every defense and excuse is abused. Everything from "The Dog Ate My Homework" to "But I Didn't Know She Was Under Eighteen."

Lorena Bobbitt when you need her?

based on some of the stories I'm reading here, I guess it's possible.

I would want to know whether there were any clinical, diagnostic, sleep studies done on the guy to establish whether he actually has a condition, or whether they were just going by his word.

Also, are they saying that the alcohol and pills are a large component in this behavior? If that's the case, I'm wondering if the court should have mandated some kind of substance abuse treatment. People often commit crimes under the heavy influence of drugs or alcohol, but that usually doesn't let them off the hook legally.

I'd say this is opening up a big can of worms if they don't establish a very clear medical diagnoses that's backed up by solid evidence from a sleep lab.

I've had my own share of sleep disorders, and seen others with some bizarre ones as well.

For example, I've known people who are "sleep eaters."

And when I talk in my sleep, I can have some extremely lucid and detailed conversations with those who are awake.

When I used to work in telephone customer service, sometimes I used to dream I was still at work talking to my customers. My wife would sometimes play along, and I used to speak to her just as if she were a regular customer. "Is there anything else I can do for you, Ma'am?"

Twice, as a young child, I had an experience with a Hypnagogic Hallucination (aka "Sleep Paralysis").


This is what people are experiencing when they think there is a ghost in their bed, or that they're being abducted by aliens.

This is what happened to me when I was seven years old:

In my dream, I was being chased by Giant Skeleton People with crab claws (Daryl and Samantha from "Bewitched" were running away from them with me) and they chased me into a giant meat-locker.

That's when I "woke-up" in my own bed-- only to find myself unable to move, and the Giant Skeleton People were in the bedroom with me! As clear as anything I have ever experienced, they were standing right there asking one another if they knew where I was.

A few moments later, I was able to move enough to pull the cover over my head. I could still hear them talking for a couple more seconds, "I think he's hiding over there..."

It was probably one of the most frightening, intense and real things I have ever experienced.

As scary as it was, it didn't take me long to realize it must have been "a brain thing." Being only seven years old, I didn't know squat about things like REM Sleep and Sleep Paralysis and stuff.

What I did know was that there was no way Daryl and Samantha from Bewitched ever hid in a meat-locker with me, and therefore no way that Giant Crab People followed me from that meat-locker into my bedroom.

It would have been much harder for me to get my head around it if it weren't so obvious that the experience stemmed from an obvious fiction-- in this case, an episode of Bewitched.

But imagine if I'd seen big gray alien heads, just like on those TV shows about "real" alien abductions? I'd probably still be in therapy for that today!

A couple days later, when I awoke from a dream to find The NOMAD Probe (Star Trek Episode 37, Season 2: The Changeling) floating in the room looking for me, I managed to calm down a whole lot faster, since by then I pretty much understood what as going on.
htp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Changeling_(Star_Trek)


See also:

sleep paralysis

Sleep paralysis is a condition that occurs in the state just before dropping off to sleep (the hypnagogic state) or just before fully awakening from sleep (the hypnopompic state). The condition is characterized by being unable to move or speak. It is often associated with a feeling that there is some sort of presence, a feeling which often arouses fear but is also accompanied by an inability to cry out. The paralysis may last only a few seconds. The description of the symptoms of sleep paralysis is similar to the description many alien abductees give in recounting their abduction experiences. Sleep paralysis is thought by some to account for not only many alien abduction delusions, but also other delusions involving paranormal or supernatural experiences (e.g., incubus and succubus).

Sleep paralysis is something many people experience once or twice in a lifetime but it is a frequent occurrence of those suffering from narcolepsy.

More:
http://skepdic.com/sleepparalysis.html



"The Nightmare" by Johann Heinrich Fussli, 1781

Also:
http://expage.com/page/hypna
(warning: sound effect on page)

when I would nap during the day. But I never saw any aliens, or hallucinated any Giant Crab People from Bewitched ,during it. I just used to dream that I was awake and moving, only to realize that I was still asleep and couldn't move, or something wierd like that. I must be a pretty boring, unimaginative, person based on what my brain did with it. I sort of regret that I didn't get something more exciting out of it.

I don't know why it only happened during the day, and never at night. Brains are pretty wierd things.

Really terrifying.

n/a

It didn't say what the doctor based his testimony on, though. Doctors can and often do, say just about anything in a court of law. I don't consider it meaningful unless there's real evidence behind it. I'm just wondering whether there was any real evidence in this case, which the article does not make clear.

because I've been told by my partner (this was years and years ago) that I have initiated sex while completely asleep. I had no memory of it at all, but he says I did. So while it must seem dubious in a sexual assault case, it's credible to me. How to prove such a thing, I have no idea.

That when she woke up, they were having sex. Which means some of their clothes must have come off at some point. They both went to a party. They both fell asleep on that couch.

Until the point she woke up, she too was involved in sleep sex.

There is a chemical in the brain that is released when we sleep. It prevents us from acting out our dreams. For some people, this doesn't work right. It didn't work right for my father. I've seen several posts talking about what they seen sleep walkers do. Some of it highly detaled stuff that we wouldn't think they could do. But they can, they are dreaming that they are doing it. They remember what their kitchen looks like, etc.

I've seen my father wake up from a nightmare on the floor. He dreamed he was in a bar fight. He told one guy to run one direction while he went another. The guy went through the bedroom door. My dad, he stepped on a picture frame. Picked up a piece of it and ran into the wall at full speed. It scared the crap out of him. If he had ran the other way, he would have ran straight into another bedroom.

He was dreaming and he was acting it out. Completely!

It was extra scary when he would have to go to the hospital. He woke up one time strangling the guy sharing the room with him. My mother promised that any time he would have to go to the hospital, she would NEVER leave him. It was the ONLY way he could sleep. She stuck by that promise until the day he died.

Think about all the weird dreams you have ever had. Some things that might have gotten you in trouble in one way or another. Sleeping with a different partner. Slapping your boss, teacher, etc.

If this guy has a "record" of sleep walking, then he seriously has a case. He had an expert on the stand that verified it.

There were to victums in this case. I would have hated to have been him.

have sex. I applaud him-safe sex, even in his sleep.
What kind of idiot would buy a defense like this? Wait, that judge did.
:eyes:

i was sleeping when I robbed the convenience store.

i was sleeping when I stole the car.

i was sleeping when i resisted arrest.

i was sleeping when i beat that guy up.

i was sleeping when i killed him.

i was sleeping when i had an illegal abortion (this one's for the near future).

it would never work. it would be laughed out of court for any crime but rape. and that's pretty fucking sick.

If I were on the jury, it would come down to this:

Did this person see a doctor about that condition before the alleged crime?

Also, sexual urges and instincts take place in a very primitive and primal part of our brain. It is a key component of our DNA and of our nervous system. "Selfish genes" and all that.

It seems like it would be a lot easier to trigger the "sex" portion of your brain than the "get dressed go outside and rob a bank" portion anyway.

Plus, rapes often take place conveniently close to a bed where sleep-sex is more likely.

I suppose if people routinely slept in bank lobbies...

or the taking one's clothes off and one's partners clothes off portions of the brain. whatever.


:eyes:

Sleeping naked next to someone and initiating sex while groggy is maybe understandable--while sleeping, perhaps i can stretch to that, but sleeping on a couch at a party and fucking a stranger? with a condom? i'm sorry, i find it quite incredible that that's an easily triggered part of your brain, regardless of where you sleep. And I have a hard time believing the defense would be successfully used in a serious crime against property or with a male victim. I could be wrong, of course, but it's hard to conceive of this working in other felony situations.

on edit: it apparently has been used in at least three well-known cases, and was successful in the case of a murdered mother-in-law and a murdered wife: post 55

seat belt. I mean, come on, what are they feeding those canadian judges?
How in the world can anyone believe that someone would put on a condom to have sex, all while sleeping?

How in the world can anyone believe a schizophrenic can see and hear people that aren't really there?

The human brain is a fussy and complex thing.

in Florida, in case you are on the market.

As painful as it is to imagine being raped by someone who goes unpunished, it does not mean that some rapists (and other "criminals") are actually asleep acting out in a dream.

It sounds like this guy might actually be innocent.

As troubled as I am about the repercussions and concerned about the woman, I am still willing to accept that this man is possibly innocent.

a few years back. I don't remember what came of it.

He claimed he drove to her house and killed her, all while sleeping. The jury bought it, and he was found not guilty. At least that what's happened in a life time movie, presumably based on this real case. There is no limit to jury's stupidity, obviously.

the case you're speaking of is probably the one mentioned at the top of this article. interestingly, this case was also in canada:

http://www.askmen.com/sports/health_100/121b_mens_health.html

this link mentions some other cases in which it was apparently used:

http://www.lakesidepress.com/pulmonary/Sleep/sleep-murder.htm

http://sleepdisorders.about.com/od/sleepwalkingandtalkin1/a/moremurder.htm

http://sleepdisorders.about.com/cs/sleepwalktalk/a/sleepmurder_3.htm


In 1992, Kenneth James Parks got into his car, drove to the home of his wife's parents and brutally attacked the couple, killing his mother-in-law with a tire iron and severely injuring his father-in-law.He then got back in his car and drove to the nearest police station to confess his crime. He claimed he had been asleep throughout the entire incident. Possible? Could a man not only commit murder, but drive his car -- twice -- while asleep?

Parks had a history of sleepwalking and deep sleep. This was known to several people, including his in-laws. Other members of the same family are similarly afflicted.

Parks had two charges laid against him - murder and attempted murder. In his defense he didn't use the term sleepwalking. His defense was "automatism." ....

But sleepwalking as a murder defense date back even farther than that. The first known case of such a defense was back in 1846 when Albert Tirrell was charged with the murder of a prostitute, Maria Bickford and setting fire to a brothel. He claimed he had committed the crimes while sleepwalking, and he was acquitted.

Sexsomnia isn’t a poor excuse for men behaving badly — it can be a very real, personal nightmare, say some sufferers.

One man, who asked not to be named, said he didn’t understand his own sleepy sex until he read Wednesday’s Toronto Sun exclusive on Jan Luedecke.

Luedecke, 33, was acquitted Tuesday of sex assault after a Scarborough judge ruled he was asleep during an assault on a stranger after a party.

Luedecke has sexsomnia, an expert testified, a disorder which has sufferers behave sexually during sleep.

The unidentified man said he cried tears of relief on learning he wasn’t alone.

More:
http://torontosun.com/News/2005/11/30/1331094.html

I put some other links in another post as well, after finding out that such a defense had indeed been offered in a murder case.

"If you can imagine it, it happened!!!"

Indeed ...

:sarcasm:

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I'm tired of reading "its plausible" or "it makes sense to me" normal people don't behave like this, I doubt a sleep walker could put on a condom let alone hold down someone and rape them, its just BULLSHIT defense sadly the Judge and some here buy his stupid BULLSHIT defense, I feel so sorry for the victim in this.

He didn't hold her down for starters. He didn't force her in any way. The moment she woke up and resisted, he woke up as well.

Yes, these things actually DO happen. More often than most people probably imagine. I happen to know that people are capable of doing far more than this man purportedly did while completely asleep, and be genuinely shocked when they are informed what they did. Believe me, it is a terrifying thing to know that you are capable of executing complex activities without being in any conscious control of the decision making process.

I cannot judge this case. I can however say that I have no doubt whatsoever that his story is entirely possible and has happened to many people before this.

No. That's why they call it a disorder.

Driving cars, climbing cranes, riding horses, and causing injury and even death. People - not "normal" people, but people with sleep disorder - have done all these things, and much more. So why not this, too?

There is no way he could put on a condom, position the woman, balance himself and rape her all while sleeping.

Also show me an example of someone ACTUALLY climing a crane in their sleep.

you haven't read the thread.

As posted in reply #78, from the BBC:

A teenage sleepwalker was rescued after being found asleep on the arm of a 130ft crane, police have revealed.

...

The unnamed 15-year-old had apparently left her home near the site, climbed the crane and walked across a narrow beam while remaining fast asleep.

...

Police were initially called at 0130 BST amid fears she was about to throw herself off but when a firefighter scaled the crane he found her curled up asleep on top of a concrete counterweight high above the ground.

Fearing to wake her in case she should panic and fall off the arm, the firefighter is understood to have found her mobile phone and called her parents from the top of the crane.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4654579.stm

But there is no way she could climb a 130 ft crane and walk a narrow beam all while sleeping - er, right?

Right, she was either a depressed teen that just decided not to go through with it or she made the whole thing up to get attention, next you're going to say magic, hypnotism, exorcism's and "professional" wrestling are all real - er, right?'

One other thing I forgot the mention first to put on the condom he had to open it, which isn't ALWAYS that easy then he had to put it on his "member", again not ALWAYS that easy and unless his victim was sleeping without undergarments and either anus up or spread open like a turkey he had to try to remove her clothing... etc.

Just because someone says so doesnt mean its true, this is why this war in iraq is still going and we are continuing to lose good people left and right because people will believe ANYTHING.

Here's an online paper on the subject.

http://www.cpa-apc.org/Publications/Archives/CJP/2003/june/shapiro.asp

They're usually called "REM Behavior Disorders". There are many types of them. These disorders are real. In one patient I tested, he would completely act out being on his uncle's farm, where he was sent while his father was in France during WW1. Since his father never came back, this would eventually turn into grief over losing his father. Almost every night, from the early 1940s until 1992.

At one point, he mistook me (during a dream act-out) for his uncle and began whimpering to me to tell him when his daddy would be home, like a little kid. When the clinical director showed the video of that night at Grand Rounds at Penn, he said that there was not a dry eye in the house.

A lot of people just get aggressive and violent without any specific content. They thrash around, lash out at their bed partner if they have one, then either wake up or fall back fully asleep. And contrary to Suzanne Jay's ignorant, sexist outburst, most of the people with REM disorders like this are women, not men.

In REM sleep, your muscles are usually paralyzed by a brain "mechanism" that prevents you from acting on the internal reality, which is often subjectively a dream. In one kind of REM disorder, sleep paralysis (I myself have it, and it was one of the "reasons" I went into the field), half your brain is awake, half is in REM, and you're paralyzed. Each are disorders of this consciousness/paralysis mechanism. Most people with REM disorders are NOT at risk for criminal acting-out. It happens once or twice a year, and most people who have committed crimes while asleep typically serve two to three years before being diagnosed, usually after being observed "acting weird" by the corrections staff.

It has been suggested that some of the "witches" and "sorcerors" (of either sex) who ran afoul of witch hunts and Autos-da-fé were caught during REM behavior. Epilepsy and other neurological disorders have also been implicated. Sleep paralysis is implicated in the modern UFO abduction phenomenon, although most self-appointed "skeptics" use this as a bludgeon to humiliate the sufferers, rather than to educate them.

Of course, if people could get treatment for them before they acted out crimes, or even strange and alienating behavior, it would save a lot of grief. But even in a civilzed country like Canada, most physicians and law enforcement people are completely unaware of sleep-related behavior disorders and don't really know how to deal with it. In the USA, it's just another reason to destroy lives, enhance the careers of prosecuting attorneys, and provide reasons for the next in an endless series of mediagenic temper tantrums, including dead blondes, kidnapped little girls, and pedophiles (real or imaginary).

I wonder how many people have been put to death for crimes committed during REM disorder episodes.

--p!

thanks for the info, the human brain is amazing.

Every time this issue comes up, a torrent of rage is released, usually from the Right, but occasionally from the Left, too. The idea that someone is getting away with something causes too much agitation for some people to deal with. Their cups runneth over -- but if they had even one episode of disordered REM behavior, or even a less-spectacular (but no less terrifying) parasomnia like sleep paralysis, they would learn in a hurry.

Snippets of videotaped REM disordered behavior have been shown on TV, too, but it really doesn't get to the heart of it. Something like a tape of "Calvin" (the guy who repeatedly acted out the section of his childhood loss) would hit home a lot harder, but the urge to medicalize it -- and then hold it up to public gawking -- dehumanizes it. Most people can't even deal with recordings of people crying, whether they're made from therapy sessions, sleep disorder treatment studies, or even recordings of children being spanked by teachers, made to defend church schools in court.

Along with our continuing research into the human brain and its disorders, we have to continue our progress in human social science and anthropology. We're still a highly superstitious and rigid bunch, like so many troupes of frightened apes with just enough savvy about things to start to loosen up a little. But we have a long road to travel yet. And our current society's enthusiastic embrace of atavistic social behavior (e.g., capital punishment) doesn't help.

With awareness, we can start to change things. With a little intelligent work, we could reduce crime dramatically with no infringement of the civil rights of the sufferers of these disorders. But we've avoided the commitment for nearly half a century. With better brain physiology work and more public education, will we be able to do it any time soon? It's possible -- if we have the guts to open those eyes screwed shut by fear.

--p!

was famously acquitted in a Toronto court about 25 years ago.

Humans are funny things (or hey, maybe just Canadians). I'm not going to flippantly say this is an impossibility.

Hey, now rapists have a new defense. Before it was-but the woman is a whore, she deserved it. Now-the woman is a whore, she deserved it-but I was sleeping when I did it.

I also would agree that thoroughly guilty men may try to use this defense, lacking any other excuse. Can you not admit though, especially in the face of all the information posted in this thread, that such a thing is at least POSSIBLE?

this defense. What kind of information can there possibly be to prove that it is possible?

People with personal experiences as well as those with professional knowledge have stated that this level of activity while sleeping is not only possible, it's quite common. It may be tempting to assume that any man on trial for rape is lying but it should be abundantly clear by now whether this particular defendant is telling the truth or not it is at least POSSIBLE. Dismissing the idea out of hand without at least keeping an open mind in examining the available evidence is simply not objective.

A 15-year old climbed up a 130-ft crane in her sleep.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4654579.stm

(Greetings and salutations from a rather long-time lurker!)

thanks for the link, and welcome!

From the BBC piece:

"Expert Irshaad Ebrahim, of the London Sleep Centre, told the Times newspaper he had treated people who had driven cars and ridden horses while asleep.

"He said one patient had even attempted to fly a helicopter."

Fortunately, I don't have a penis, so it's somewhat less likely that I'd rape someone during it.

I get sleep paralysis at least once a month. Once I got up in the middle of the night and started getting ready for school, including showering and putting my contacts in. When your brain doesn't work quite right, all sorts of crazy things can happen.

and I caution folks who weren't in court to remember evidence and decisions are usually more thorough and involved than what the press reports.

We're only getting part of the story, so we're really not in a position to make a proper judgment. We're dealing with a possible sleep disorder mixed up with alcohol and maybe a he said she said situation. It's hard to untangle the truth in a trial, let alone from a brief news story

anything-cause when are we getting a full story?

Given that some are claiming that this was rape and others are suggesting that this was a case of a rare neurological disorder. Here is a case were the details matter, and we just don't have enough information to have an intelligent discussion.

I blogged about sexsomnia in 2003 (reprinted in full, since I wrote it):

The Sandman Made Me Do It

Go to sleep dear, it's time to have sex

'Sexsomnia' occurs more often than we think, says an Ottawa doctor

A nightclub bouncer arrived in Dr. Paul Fedoroff's office after his wife complained he was constantly trying to have sex with her when she was asleep. ...

Thus began the Ottawa psychiatrist's research into a bizarre new disorder that he and other Canadian psychiatrists have dubbed "sexsomnia" -- people who engage in sexual behaviour while asleep. They believe the disorder should be recognized as a new "clinical entity" and warn it is far more prevalent than doctors suspect.

At first glance, this struck me as funny as anything to come out of the Weekly World News; but almost instantly, I was deeply disturbed by this thought: Doing strange things while sound asleep -- including "aimless wandering, carrying objects from one place to another for no apparent reason, furniture rearranging, inappropriate eating, urinating in closets, going outdoors," driving a car, and, yes, sexual activity (which can "run the gamut from moaning to rape-like behavior and violent masturbation that leaves bruising or soreness") -- is certainly unusual, but hardly anything "new." (Even Shakespeare utilized the phenomenon; Lady MacBeth is sound asleep when she confesses to murder and repeatedly tries to wash the blood off her hands.)

So why call it a "bizarre new disorder"? The only thing "new" about it is the name.

What's bothersome about heralding this particular form of parasomnia as some groundbreaking "new" discovery is its potential implication in sexual-assault and abuse cases.

Fortunately, the potential for exploiting "sexsomnia" as a means of a legal defense is not lost on minds clearer than those of the "pioneering" shrinks, who acknowledge (but appear to dismiss):

...several cases of men who were charged with sexually assaulting their partners, or even their own children. All were "exculpated" after doctors found evidence of sexsomnia, and the study suggests cases of alleged sexual molestation should be investigated for evidence of the sleep sex disorder -- a prospect that alarms groups who work with sex assault victims.

They fear that if sexsomnia winds up in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, the "bible" doctors use to identify psychiatric illnesses, the new diagnosis could provide a convenient way for a sex offender to avoid a prison term. ...

"The key issue here is if a person is asleep, there's precedent in law the person is not responsible for their behaviour," says (Dr. Colin Shapiro, lead author of the report).

That precedent was set in Canada in 1987, when Kenneth Parks got up from his couch in Pickering, Ont., after falling asleep, got in his car, drove 23 kilometres to his mother-in-law's house, and then stabbed her and beat her to death with a tire iron. Mr. Parks said he was sleepwalking and was acquitted.

The 11 cases of sexsomnia Dr. Shapiro's team report in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry are not nearly so shocking, but disturbing nonetheless... While all of the men who were charged were cleared, Dr. (Paul) Fedoroff, co-director of the sexual behaviours clinic at the Royal Ottawa Hospital, acknowledges it's impossible to know for certain whether they were truly asleep. ...

Go to sleep dear, it's time to have sex
Ottawa Citizen
June 22, 2003

Excuse me? Sleepwalking and talking "are all pretty tough to fake"? You're the one who's asleep, Doc; if Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi could get away with fooling even one shrink with his shoddy multiple-personality act (which he did), and would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley could manipulate his own psychiatrists to coach him through faking shizophrenia (which, fortunately, didn't hold up in court), you're going to have a hard time convincing me that it takes an Edward Norton to fake a sleep disorder. (We don't, after all, monitor the brainwaves of murderers in the act.)

Now, I'm not suggesting that automatism ("acting out" during sleep) is never a valid defense; it most certainly can be. I'm more concerned about the potential for its abuse. There have, for example, been certain landmark cases in which a defendant's acquittal of murder thanks to the defense of "homicidal sonambulism" (or "sleep murder") is positively astounding.

Take Steven Steinberg, a Scottsdale, Arizona, man who in 1981 stabbed his wife 26 times, then told police she had been killed by burglars. But the evidence was against Steinberg; he went to trial, and was acquitted on the defense that he had killed his wife in his sleep. The verdict: Not guilty by reason of temporary insanity. Now, I'm no shrink, but if Steinberg had no memory of what he had done (at least, he said he didn't), what does his need to make up a "burglary" story say to you?

Just as disturbing is the inequity in which the somnabulism defense is deemed valid. In a remarkably similar 1999 case, Scott Falater, another Arizona man, stabbed his wife 44 times, dragged her body to the swimming pool, held her head underwater, and then hid his bloodied clothes, changed into pajamas, and bandaged an injured hand -- all while purportedly sound asleep.

The difference between the two cases is that, despite strong testimony supporting the sleepwalking defense (from the same trio of experts who helped acquit Kenneth Parks in 1992), Falater was convicted, and today is serving out a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Steinberg's defense attorney, Robert Hirsch, told The Arizona Republic: "Times have changed. I don't think anybody could sell it (a sleepwalking defense) today. It's a process that I think America has gone through. People don't believe in any mental-state defenses. It didn't matter whether he was sleepwalking or not."

Sounds like a case of sour grapes from a lawyer who's just lost a case, but there's a seed of truth in Hirsch's assessment: Jurors are generally wary of any "mental-state defense," and inclined to assume that the defendant is faking it.

Nevertheless, the sonambulism defense has resulted in the acquittals of several other high-profile "sleepwalking" criminals since the Steinberg conviction:

In January, 2001, Richard Overton was cleared of two sexual-assault charges (although convicted of of child endangerment and child abuse) stemming from a 1998 incident in which he claims he suddenly awoke in the bed of a seven-year-old girl.

In May, 2001, 19-year-old Adam Kieczykowski entered dorm rooms at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, sexually assaulted ten female students, and stole items from some of them. He was acquitted on 18 different charges, "mark(ing) the first time in 156 years that the "sleepwalking defense" had been used successfully in Massachusetts."

In April, 2003, Marc Reider, 24, was acquitted of aggravated manslaughter in the 1999 head-on-crash death of a 39-year-old woman, because Reider was deemed to have been "sleep-driving."

As interesting as these cases may be, both "sleep crime" and its use as a legal defense are extremely rare; one estimate is that the sleepwalking defense has only "been raised in 20 to 30 murder trials worldwide."

But it is likely that, should Drs. Fedoroff and Shapiro reap the kind of accolades they seek with the announcement of their "new" sleep disorder, the "sleepwalking defense" will become more common.

And that's dangerous, for two reasons:

First, it does provide an all-too-easy out for accused sexual assailants, especially in the absence of evidence showing premeditation. Had Scott Falater not been spotted by a neighbor "dragging the body to the pool, putting on gloves, removing his bloodstained clothes and hiding them and the knife in his Volvo," he might have gotten away with the sleepwalking defense in the murder of his wife. Without similar evidence of premeditation and deliberation against an accused "sleep-rapist," the burden of proof that the defendant was not sleepwalking will fall on the victim of the assault. Perhaps that's legally appropriate, but should the onus fall on the victim to prove anything more than that the crime was committed, and that the defendant was the one who committed it?

Second, used indiscriminately, the sleepwalking defense will jeopardize legitimate cases in which parasomnia, and not the sufferer, is to blame. As mentioned earlier, it's tough enough trying to prove that a defendant was under the influence of any disorder, because jurors have grown immune to exaggerated claims of "The devil" -- or fill in the disorder of your choice here -- "made me do it." There's been a ongoing backlash against the American "society of victims," and that works very much against legitimate "mental-state" defenses.

Will "The sandman made me do it" become the new national joke? As Ayako Kado & Larry Fisher wrote in their oft-quoted paper, Sleepwalking – Nightmare for the courts:

The new dilemma is that various kinds of legal defense such as sleepwalking are firmly supported by medical evidence. The justice system is faced with a medically excusable defense that has the potential of being abused. In fact, Dr. Kryger writes, "The potential for sleep disorder to become the Twinkie defense of the 21st century is frightening"...

Click the blog link for embedded links, and numerous related-article links:

http://blogs.salon.com/0002551/2003/06/24.html#a156

We had this issue come up in our state. The defendant raped his young daughter...afterwards made her shower to wash off any DNA. After she disclosed, he called her a liar and denied the allegations. He forgot about potential DNA on her little undies. When the DNA came back he had a new defense: sexsomnia. He found it on the internet.

Lovely man who was willing to put his daughter through the hell of a trial to avoid consequences for his actions (not to mention the hell of the rape).

The leading sleep disorder expert in our state said it was a load of crap. (the technical term).

Rapists would do anything to get away with it.
But hey, as long as judges or jury is buying it...

it's pretty tough to make a decision as to whether the defense was valid or not. It may be that there's a physiological basis for what happened- so all the outrage could be misplaced. Stranger things have happened.

PB

"I was stoned and I missed it."

He only suspected he had had sex after using the bathroom and discovering he was still wearing a condom, court heard.

I'm sorry, I can't stop laughing.

:rofl:

and sleepbaker (yes, I have loaded the breadmaker in my sleep. The fresh bread for breakfast was nice, but a little weird....) who is married to a sleep Tech supporter (who has talked me through fixing a rather complex wireless networking problem in his sleep) I have to say that it's not something we have control over, but we can perform very complex tasks - including sex. The mechanism in the autonomic nervous system that is supposed to shut down movement while sleeping doesn't work for us. I live in fear that I will decide to go for a drive some night, and locking myself in wouldn't help - I know how to manipulate the locks. So I have some (not much) sympathy for the sleepwalker; that's the kind of thing one warns others about if you're sharing a roof.

And it little to do with REM sleep. In fact, most sleepwalkers do so in stage 4 sleep, not in REM sleep. There are some theories that encouraging REM sleep would help allay sleepwalking because REM sleep does manage to shut down the movement processing for most people.

during the party. Lets say he was actually sleeping when he raped this woman. Knowing he did this before to his girlfriends, what right did he have to go to a party, drink, and then take a nap? He is drinking, he has condoms ready-what is he thinking, if he knows he rapes people in his sleep, and drinking makes it worse?
It's completely ridiculous he is getting off for this. And how touching that he is trying not to drink so much so perhaps he won't rape anyone again.

I have on several occassions woken up in the middle of having sex with my girlfriend. There are other times when my girlfriend says something along of lines of "My, weren't you insistent last night", gives me a wink and a smile, and walks away leaving me scratching my head. She seemed fine with it after I told her I didn't remember having sex the previous night. However, it's still a very disturbing thought that some night she may not want to have sex and I may force her to without even realizing what I'm doing.

I've read that situations like mine are often due to emotional trauma incurred as a child, which would make sense in my situation.

there are hack therapists who will tell you every possible symptom or atypical behavior you have is due to childhood trauma. that is why we have repressed memory hacks still operating all over the place. don't fall for it.

interesting symptoms. i have my doubts about this case though.

I will not inform you of the details but this happened to me. SO I know it can happen!!

woke up several times in the wee hours, being screamed at and pummeled by my father, while he was sleeping, I certainly believe people can do violence and other things in their sleep.

There was a case where a man was acquitted of murder because he'd done it in his sleep.

If you're asleep, then you can't be held liable. Seems pretty simple to me.

And people do all sorts of things in their sleep: cook, shower & dress for work, communicate with others, etc.

do a decent job. I would say for 'crimes' its about 90% plus accuracy. Like drugs, rape, and the like.

This is a very very strange one.

do a decent job. I would say for 'crimes' its about 90% plus accuracy. Like drugs, rape, and the like.

This is a very very strange one.

about these excuses to do crimes - minor, retarded, sleep-walking, the twinkie defense, etc. is it doesn't change a damn thing.

If you're minor who is committing crimes, it's too bad you don't know right from wrong (riiight), you're still a menace and people have suffered because of you. You should be punished fully.

If you're retarded, it's too bad you can't help yourself. We don't need violent retards amongst us, you'd have to go.

If you ate a twinkie and the sugar exploded in your brain and you went and shot the Mayor of San Francisco, too bad you can't handle your snacks - you have to go, you're killing people.

Too bad if you seek out women to rape while you're asleep, we don't need sleepwalking rapists here, you'd have to go.

I've seen men get out of jail from killing their wives from the sleepwalking defense.


WHY spend the taxpayer's money trying to prove if it was really sleepwalking or not when even if it IS sleepwalking, we just don't need you here.

If you have a defect, we're obligated to help you.

If you have a defect that makes you hurt people, we're obligated to to punish you. Or, maybe you're just too defective to let loose on the streets. Maybe too defective to live...

Enjoy your stay.

The police in my home town just Tasered to Death an Autisitic man who was unarmed and 'freaking out'.

http://www.journal-topics.com/dp/05/dp051123.1.html


Its all based on a legal concept of being of sound mind. Have ever lived with a crazy person? They are a pain in the ass. If we start down the path you're suggesting the end is eugenics.


Lets just execute all the retarded people. You think that is very far from your logic? They are a waste of space, a drain and occasionally totally freak out. Most of them are already locked up, where they have no future, no life. They are rife for all kinds of abuse both sexually and not.

They ARE NOT "EXCUSES TO DO CRIMES"!!! Children or child like brains or even worse totally demented people CANT UNDERSTAND. They are carried away in their own crazy world and it takes TOTAL COMPASSION to deal with them. Especially Autistic or Schizophrenics. This disorder is just like that except the person seems otherwise, 'normal'. A Victorian world of absolutes in law is Unfair, unchristian and utter nonsense that's why we have courts and juries. I don't trust Bush. I don't trust Repukes. But you know what? I really do trust our courts on these esoteric issues.

Now that this person has been proven to 'sleep sex' he certainly has an obligation to inform people he sleeps with at least. Also he should have civil liability like any other person who 'harms' another. But RAPE is a very very very very very SPECIFIC crime. And like I said, this is TOTALLY STRANGE, but it doesn't make it wrong.

"Lets just execute all the retarded people. You think that is very far from your logic? They are a waste of space, a drain and occasionally totally freak out. Most of them are already locked up, where they have no future, no life. They are rife for all kinds of abuse both sexually and not."

I said nothing of the sort.

I merely draw the line and being my brother's keeper. As long as you're not a menace, I'm obligated to help you. If you're a menace, we don't need you amongst us - whatever the reason.

It has nothing to do with de-valuing the mentally impaired or feeling superior to them and everything to do with choosing who lives and who dies.

Because people will always be killed whether you like it or not. So, it becomes a matter of the so-called 'good' people to decide who dies instead of the evil or impaired.

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. You have chosen to let twinkie eaters and sleepwalkers and 'special' people and minors decide who dies.

Right now, Cheney gets to decide who dies in Iraq AND this country. I'd like to see someone ELSE have that responsibility and I'd like to see certain people executed for their crimes.

Wow. :puke:

Sheesh.

You had sex only because you were asleep, but you were awake enough to make sure to put on a condom?