IT’S NOT RAPE, I’M A SEXSOMNIAC
Court hears sleep condition left defendant with no recollection
Man accused of hundreds of sex assaults on a woman as she slept in bed told her:
A MAN accused of raping a woman in bed told her he was suffering from sexsomnia, a court heard yesterday.
Lawrence Barilli’s alleged victim told the High Court in Glasgow he claimed to have been diagnosed with the condition, which makes sufferers have sex while asleep.
She added such incidents had occurred “a couple of hundred times” but Barilli always insisted he had no memory and said the condition “made me do it”.
Barilli, 35, is charged with assault and rape.
The alleged offences are said to
have occurred in a number of locations in the Glasgow area.
Peter Ferguson QC, prosecuting, asked the woman if there was anything “sexual” that caused her “upset”.
She told the court: “I would wake up with him having sex with me.
“I did not really know what to think. It was silent throughout. I did not like it.”
The woman said after the first alleged incident, she confronted Barilli the next morning.
She told the trial: “I basically asked him what last night was about. He said, ‘What are you talking about?’
“I said having sex through the night – but he said he had no memory of it.”
The woman claimed when it happened again she felt she was not able to “stop him”.
The woman said Barilli later told her he had been “diagnosed with a condition that makes him do that”.
She added: “He said it was sexsomnia.”
Ferguson asked: “Did he suggest he had been diagnosed by a qualified person?” The witness replied: “Yes – his GP.”
Ferguson: “Was he aware that you did not like him doing it?”
The woman: “Yes – I would tell him in the morning.”
The prosecutor: “But, his reaction was that he was not aware he was doing it?” The witness: “Yes.” The woman rejected the suggestion by Barilli’s QC Tony Graham that all sexual encounters had been with her consent.
Barilli, from Clydebank, is also accused of assaulting and raping another woman.
He denies the allegations and the trial continues.