Sexomania
A number of Australian and international publications reported that a Canadian man was acquitted of sexual assault early this month after a judge ruled that he was asleep during the attack.
See articles published by SMH, The Courier Mail, Herald Sun and The Sunday Times. All these newspapers reported the story in the same way, but none of them were very comprehensive.
Thirty-three year old Jan Luedecke met a woman at a party and after drinking, both of them fell asleep on a couch. The woman woke to find the man having sex with her and pushed him off.
He told the court he only suspected they had had sex after finding he was still wearing a condom in the bathroom.
“A sleep expert testified at his trial that the man suffered from sexomania, a sort of sleep walking that includes sexual acts, likely brought on by alcohol, sleep deprivation and genetics” (SMH 1/12/05)
The court heard that the man had previously had “sleep sex” with four girlfriends.
According to the report, the judgement has outraged women’s groups. Suzanne Jay of the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres said: “This is infuriating. It’s another case of the courts not taking a woman seriously, adding yet another item to the list of excuses which men use for sexual assault”.
This point relates to long-term debates regarding sexual assault and gender relations. There have always been legal and sociocultural disputes about what constitutes rape and sexual harassment. It’s difficult to disagree with the fact that this apparently new medical/psychological condition does blur the already blurry definitions of rape. But it’s also difficult to think of having sex while asleep as rape. If this is a genuine condition, the motive of rape just isn’t there.
And it seems that there are many people who are familiar with the condition, either because they, or their sexual partner has the condition….
Another report regarding sexomania, published by Indiatimes mentioned other cases of sexomania. Some girlfriends of men with the condition prefer having sex with their boyfriends when they’re sleeping. One woman describes her boyfriend as a “more amorous and gentle lover and more orientated towards satisfying” her while he’s having sleep sex.
Yet another 37-year-old man is described as “more aggressive and more amorous” during sleep sex.
