The ex-girlfriend of a man who claims he was asleep when he allegedly raped a female friend has said she saw a documentary about “sexsomnia” during the relationship and asked him to go to a doctor
The 28-year-old witness told the jury in his trial of instances when the accused man would “grind” against her in bed while he was asleep. She said her “worst fear had been realised” when the accused man told her about the alleged incident with his female friend.
The man, who cannot be named for legal reasons, has pleaded not guilty at the Central Criminal Court to one count of raping the woman at an apartment in Dublin in the early hours of September 28th, 2008.
The woman told Hugh Hartnett SC, defending, that in the summer of 2008, early in their relationship when they had only kissed, she and the accused man had shared a bed in a friend’s house. She said she woke up to find the accused “grinding” up against her back.
She was shocked and annoyed as she presumed he was “making a pass.”
She told him to get off her and tried to push him off before jumping out of bed and turning on the light. She said the accused continued to grind in the bed and she asked what he was doing.
“He did not stop,” she told the court, “I realised he was asleep.”
She said she "jostled" him and he rolled over onto his back. "I felt embarrassed for him," she told Mr Hartnett, "I thought it was a freak incident." She got back into bed and went to sleep.
‘Erratic’ sleeping habits
She said as the relationship continued she became increasingly aware of his “erratic” sleeping habits including sleep-walking, night terrors and sexual advances.
The woman said in terms of sexual matters the accused man would mostly grind up against her. She said she would sometime try and talk to him and sometimes push him off.
She told Mr Hartnett that she was satisfied he was asleep. She said sometimes he would have no memory of it and other times would ask her if he had done something the night before.
The woman also described an incident towards the end of their relationship where they had been asleep in bed and the accused man punched her in the side of the face sending her flying out of the bed. She said it had caused a disturbance and the accused man woke up. She said he felt very bad about this and other instances.
“Obviously I don’t want him to feel bad because I know he didn’t mean it,” she told the jury.
She told Mr Hartnett that the “grinding” would happen with or without alcohol.
The woman told Patrick McGrath SC, prosecuting, during cross-examination, that she had never woken up with her clothes off to find the accused man having sex with her.
She said that in February 2009 when they were coming up to six months in a relationship, the accused man had told her about the incident to which this case related . She said it felt like her worst fear had been realised and the two of them cried.
The woman said they had spent a lot of time together in bed during which these sexual advances had been made. She said she had asked him to go to a doctor after seeing documentaries on “sexsomnia.”
The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of eight men and four women.
Alcohol ‘not a factor’
Earlier during cross- examination the 29-year-old accused man told Patrick McGrath SC, prosecuting, that alcohol “was not a factor” in the incident. He said he was “drunk but not very drunk.”
“I know it was nothing to do with alcohol, I know it was not a drunken thing,” he said.
He told Mr McGrath he had no memory of a physical act of sex with the complainant and his first memory of the incident was being on top of her.
Mr McGrath went through details of texts sent from the accused man to the complainant in the days following the incident. The accused said he had apologised to the woman in one of the texts because she had told him he had raped her.
“I knew it had happened in my sleep,” he said, “that did not make me any less sorry.”
He disagreed with Mr McGrath that when he met up with the woman he had replied “I know” when she told him he had raped her. He said he had immediately told her he was asleep.
He told Mr McGrath that he had taken steps to ensure it would not happen again such as no longer sharing a bedroom with female friends and going to a sleep clinic. He said it had not happened again.
The accused man said he felt guilty it had happened to someone before he got help.
Text messages
Mr McGrath put it to him that, even though he knew something had happened, he did not mention sleep-walking in the texts before meeting with the complainant. The accused man said he wanted to talk to her in person and it was not something he could explain away in a text message.
“I was having trouble understanding it myself. I did not know it was possible. It was only when I went home and looked on the internet I realised it had happened to other people,” he said.
He disagreed with Mr McGrath that the complainant’s lack of response to his text messages had prompted him to go and look at the possibility of raising sleep-walking as an excuse. He disagreed it was only after the woman said she had been raped that he raised the issue of sleep-walking.
He denied that he had gone to a sleep clinic in February 2009 looking for a defence of sleep walking. He denied that he had been prompted to go to the clinic after gardai started their investigation in January 2009.