'Sleepwalking' rapist gets 2 years

HAPARANDA, Sweden, Sept. 2 (UPI) -- A 35-year-old man was convicted and sentenced to two years in jail for raping a sleeping woman at a party, despite claims he was sleepwalking.

The unidentified defendant, who has until Sept. 22 to appeal the Haparanda District Court ruling, testified he had no knowledge of the rape because he was asleep at the time, the Norrbottens Kuriren daily reported.

Haparanda Police provided DNA test results to support evidence the man had sex with the sleeping woman, who was also unidentified.

The court also heard expert-witness testimony from Dr. Per-Axel Karlsson, a senior physician at an Ojebyn psychiatric clinic in Pitea, that it was extremely unlikely the man could commit rape while asleep.

Karlsson testified the man's actions were "complex and goal-orientated" and there was no way he could have been mid-slumber, the newspaper said.

The defendant was also ordered to pay $11,700 in damages to the woman.

Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, is a sleep disorder in which sleepwalkers arise from the slow-wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities usually performed during a state of full consciousness.

These activities can be as benign as sitting up in bed or walking to the bathroom or as hazardous as cooking and driving.

In 2004, sleep medicine experts at the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney asserted they successfully treated a woman who claimed to have had sex with strangers in her sleep, New Scientist reported.