Sometimes, I'm rather naive. I read that a Canadian womyn successfully sued her Meth dealer and thought "Good Lord, the courts can't get any worse than this!" Oh, how I was so, so wrong.
Crown prosecutors are currently attempting to have sexsomnia declared a mental illness. Sexsomnia is pretty self-explanatory. Apparently some people sleep walk and well.. screw. They get out of bed, completely unaware and boink somebody (or something).
The reason why this is in the courts is because an Ontario man sexually assaulted a womyn and then claimed that he was suffering sexsomnia and had no recollection of the event. Yeah. Pause on that one and read it again. Done? Okay, let us move on.
Luedecke alleges that during a party at a Toronto home in 2003, he got drunk and fell asleep on a couch.His lawyers maintained that while Luedecke was in a dissociative sleepwalking state, he went over to a woman who was sleeping on an adjacent couch, lifted up her skirt, put on a condom and began sexual intercourse with her.
Okay.. it clearly states that he was drunk. Now maybe he doesn't "remember" because he was three sheets to the wind? Or maybe it's just a convenient goddamn excuse? Yeah, I'll choose option B for 500$ Alex.
I'm not a psychiatrist or a Crown prosecutor, but I am a support worker who works with sexual assault survivors and I can tell you that these kinds of bullshit excuses are used all the time. Mostly because there's way too much evidence to disprove that it happened so they come up with some kinda crap story about being asleep, too drunk to remember or in some sort of trance.
Who exactly is our justice system protecting?
Seriously. This is 2008. In Canada. And we're going to declare sexsomnia a mentall illness? This is such a slippery slope. We acknowledge that and then we'll be acknowledging "Your honour, I was listening to some really intense Backstreet Boys music and I just got so into the music, I couldn't help myself". Give it a year. It'll happen.
1 comment:
Wow this is fucked up. Seriously, when I used to sleepwalk I would stumble into the kitchen, usually stub my toe, and then stumble back to bed. I never felt the urge to rape, kill or commit any other violent acts. Because I was asleep/. I hope someone develops asshole-beating-somnia the next time they run into any of the jerks involved in this case.
PS- thanks for commenting on my blog, I'm glad I found your site too!
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