Raped By A Stranger With Sexsomnia

by Anonymous

This happened about three years ago. I was asleep in bed when apparently my father had gone outside to a neighbour's house for a reason that I don't remember and had apparently forgot to lock the door. I think it was about 9pm when I went to sleep and I remember that our street was really quiet.

Suddenly, I felt something on me, something quite heavy, and woke up. My nightie had been pulled up and there was a strange man on top of me, raping me. I don't want to go into much detail for obvious reasons, but I could feel his erect penis inside me and I felt so violated. I remember shouting "What are you doing?" at him and trying to push him off. But he just had this weird look to him and kept going as though I hadn't said anything, and I wasn't strong enough to push him off me. I knew my mother had been downstairs watching television, so I screamed. Weirdly, he didn't even try to stop me. I screamed again, then realised my mother mustn't have heard me because the living room door had been shut and the television was probably covering the sound of my scream. All the while, this man was still penetrating me. To say it was awful would be an understatement.

I took a breath and screamed as loud as I could. I heard a door open downstairs and heard footsteps. My mother appeared at the door and stopped, I guessed in shock as she took in the sight. I knew she would react in a moment. But she didn't. She just watched as he carried on. I was confused and shouted to her to get him off me, or something like that, but she just stood in silence, watching a strange man raping her daughter. It was so surreal. Finally, my dad came back and went upstairs and dragged the guy off me as soon as he saw him. He wanted to kill him, but I managed to stop him - I knew it wouldn't help matters to have my dad in prison. So instead, he just held him there. The guy blinked and starting asking strange questions like what was happening, who were we, and what were we doing.

Long story short, he was arrested and tried and claimed to have sexsomnia and said that he must have wandered out of his house and into the nearest unlocked house. At first, I thought it was just a ridiculous defence that nobody would believe, but a psychologist confirmed it. The man was cleared of rape.

I thought I would feel devastated, but actually I felt sympathy for him. I knew now that he hadn't meant to do it, and that he probably felt terrible about it. I still felt violated, but the knowledge that it wasn't intentional helped me to deal with that a little. I was glad he was cleared, as I didn't want someone to go to prison for something that they couldn't even remember doing and that they never meant to do.

I knew that being cleared would mean he would probably rape another girl in the future, but that was just something that had to be accepted. He did actually go on to rape a friend of mine, but I managed to convince her to believe that he had been asleep at the time. I know he's certain to rape someone else, and that she'll probably feel violated too, but that's something the girl should just accept, as it's not the man's fault that he has a medical condition. We wouldn't punish someone with 'ticks' who accidentally swung their arm at someone, we would accept them and support them. By the same token, we shouldn't punish someone with sexsomnia, even if they do rape girls, we should accept them and support them.