Yannick Giguère, accused of raping a friend in the middle of the night, was found not criminally responsible for his actions because of sexsomnia, a rare disorder by which a sleeping person can have sex without being aware of it. However, the man will have to be registered as a sex offender for 20 years, the court ruled.
“The evidence clearly establishes that at the time, the accused suffered from sexsomnia,” judge André Perreault concluded on Tuesday at the Montreal courthouse.
“The plaintiff was indeed the victim of a sexual assault […] No one is questioning that, “said the magistrate, however, adding that the victim was” reliable in his story “.
To recognize the “well-established sexsomnia” of the accused, the judge took into account in particular the psychiatric report produced by the defence, as well as the testimony of the ex-spouse of the accused, who mentioned about fifteen episodes of sexsomnia during the five to six years of their relationship.
This episode of sexual somnambulism was indeed an “automatism”, but “with mental disorders, in the legal sense of the expression”, specified the court.
The accused was therefore not acquitted. He will be placed on the sex offenders register for 20 years, will have to provide a DNA sample and will be referred to the Mental Disorder Review Board, which will decide on the conditions of his release.
“The court wishes to emphasize that a would-be assailant would be ill-advised to commit a sexual assault hoping, based on the outcome in this case, that he could not be found guilty by inventing sexsomnia,” warned the judge. The reasons, reasoning and requirements of his very detailed decision should make it possible to avoid “that the culprits get away with it”, he estimated.