In recent years, Sweden has been several cases of rape accused claimed that they had sex in his sleep, and therefore should be freed.
Now the prosecutor’s office produced a report, which provides guidance prosecutors in these cases, which are relatively new for the Swedish judicial system.
– In recent maybe five, ten years, there have been and not further back in time, says Ginger Johansson at the Public Prosecutor’s development center in Gothenburg.
In many of the cases in recent years, District Court and Court of Appeal made various judgments. One such example is a man who in 2014 was convicted of the rape of Östersund District Court, after the woman who slept in the same bed as the man woke up that he had sex with her.
The Court of Appeal however acquitted later the man and said that the prosecution had failed to refute the man’s explanation – namely that he slept when he had sex with the woman.
In a another hovrättsdom of January this year however, convicted a man of rape. The Court of Appeal noted in that case that the man’s plea that he slept was so implausible that it could be ignored.
The Public Prosecutor’s report, as the prosecutor Ginger Johansson is the co-author, is among another with a review of the state of research on what is called sleep sex, therefore, to have sex in his sleep.
– What I can say is that fenomet itself exists. Experts in sleep around the world have found that it is possible to have sex during sleep, says Ginger Johansson.
The report recommended that prosecutors in these cases call a sleep expert to testify in court. There is also a point list of questions that the prosecutor should investigate thoroughly, to give sleep expert to assess whether it is about real sleep sex or just an attempt by the accused to escape punishment for a rape.
– the this objection can of course appear very odd and strange. It may mean that they are not always taken seriously and the judiciary has been difficult to handle these cases. Now we hope that this will provide good guidance to prosecutors so that they are using a thorough investigation can get convictions where it should be, says prosecutor Ginger Johansson.
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