A man has been acquitted of rape after a jury accepted his claim that he was unaware sex was taking place because he was asleep.
Darrell Swanson, 39, told jurors that he suffered from a rare psychological condition called sexsomnia which meant that he was having intercourse during the night without knowing it. Mr Swanson, from Dunfermline, Fife, had denied three historical rapes, two of a woman now aged 36 and one involving her younger sister, now 30.
During the trial at the High Court at Livingston, Ian Morrison, a consultant neurologist with NHS Tayside and a specialist in sleep medicine, supported Mr Swanson’s defence. He said: “It’s almost exclusively the case that there’s a lack of recall. Generally speaking patients do not recall. Some