A psychiatrist who specialises in sleep disorders has told a rape trial that she believes the accused has a history of sleepwalking, night terrors and “sexsomnia”.
The 29-year-old man claims he was asleep when he raped his female friend after they went to bed together following a night out.
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.
Dr Catherine Crowe, director of a sleep clinic based at the Mater Hospital, told Hugh Hartnett SC, defending, that she believed the alleged rape was “more likely” an episode of sleep sex.
She said the accused had a clear history of parasomnia, or sleepwalking, going back to early adolescence.
Dr Crowe said the accused had a history of sexsomnia before the alleged rape and, according to his former girlfriend, continued to have sleep sex afterwards.
“The event on the night could have been a sexsomnia episode. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. It is up to the court to deal with that,” Dr Crowe said.
She clarified when questioned further by Mr Hartnett that she thought the incident was “more likely” a sexsomnia episode, given the pattern of his behaviour.
“The end point was different,” Dr Crowe said, referring to the alleged rape, but she said it was “otherwise very similar” to the accused’s sexsomnia episodes, of which the jury had previously heard evidence.
She told the jury she had heard evidence during the trial and read witness statements and felt there was no contradiction to her diagnosis.
“There was no time that I thought, ‘Oh no, I think I have got this wrong.’ There was a consistency to the story that seemed valid to me,” Dr Crowe said.
‘Serious violation’
Dr Crowe agreed with Paddy McGrath SC, prosecuting, that what is alleged is “a serious violation of the complainant” and said it was “absolutely correct” that she never initiated sex, nor did she ever consent to it.
“There was no dispute of what had happened and that the accused was the instigator,” she said.
She said that she was not aware of the complainant’s evidence before she compiled her report, but having heard the evidence it doesn’t change her mind over her conclusion.
Dr Crowe accepted that this incident was the only one involving full penetrative sex heard during the trial, but said: “It doesn’t jar on me.”
Dr Crowe accepted that the complainant gave evidence of a conversation between the accused and herself, unlike the other sexsomnia episodes the jury had heard.
She said she believed evidence from the complainant that the accused was awake minutes after sex was not significant.
She said what was important was whether he was awake when he put his penis in her vagina.
The trial continues before Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy and a jury of eight men and four women.