‘Sexsomnia’ defence: Businessman pleads not guilty to sexual assault
Credit to Author: Keith Fraser| Date: Tue, 26 Nov 2019 01:51:45 +0000
A businessman who has pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting a woman during a blind date is raising the rare defence of “sexsomnia” during his trial.
On Monday, Karl Richard Antonius called several witnesses, including his mother and a girlfriend, to testify about sleeping issues he claims to have experienced throughout his life.
He’s expected to argue that at the time of the alleged 2015 assault, he had sexsomnia, a condition in which a person behaves very much like someone sleepwalking and therefore is acting involuntarily and not responsible for their actions.
In April, the complainant, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, testified that she was sexually assaulted during a blind date with Antonius.
They had gone to several locations before she lost her keys and Antonius suggested that they go back to his “work” apartment at the Fairmont Pacific Rim luxury hotel in Vancouver.
She maintains that she had no interest in having sex with him and it was late and she just wanted to get some sleep before she dealt with the issue of her missing keys.
The alleged victim testified that Antonius gave her some shorts and a T-shirt to change into and she went to bed before he tried to climb into bed with her, groping her.
She said she swatted his hand away and said no and then fell asleep but was awoken to him engaging in sexual intercourse that she claimed was non-consensual.
Antonius, who is expected to testify later this week, called several witnesses to testify Monday about issues he has had with sleep, including eating, walking and talking while he’s asleep.
His mother, Val Downing, testified about an incident in the summer of 2018 while she was travelling with her son in Rome in which she says he cupped her breast in the middle of the night while they were forced to share a king-sized bed in a hotel after their vehicle had broken down.
“I woke up and said, ‘Karl, it’s your mother, stop it,’ and he stopped right away,” Downing told B.C. Supreme Court Justice Austin Cullen.
Karl Richard Antonius at court on Monday. Several people, including Antonius’s mother and a girlfriend, testified about sleeping issues he claims to have had throughout his life.
When she talked about the incident with him later, he couldn’t recall what had happened, she said.
Under questioning from defence lawyer Bill Smart, she said that on another occasion during the trip while in Stockholm, her son came into the bedroom where she was sleeping during the night and was naked and demanding to know why she was sleeping in his bed.
He couldn’t recall that incident later either, she told the judge.
A 20-year-old girlfriend of Antonius, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, testified about an incident in November 2018 at a condo in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where she said Antonius several times during one night tried to have sex with her when she was not in the mood to have sex.
“I already at that point figured it was a sleep walk,” she said of the first attempt to have sex. “I was confused and scared.”
When she discussed it with Antonius later, he couldn’t recall details of the incident, she said.
Robert Anderson, a friend of Antonius, said that he witnessed a number of incidents while the accused was visiting him on Anderson’s catamaran vessel.
On one of those occasions, while the vessel was docked in a Caribbean island, he says a security guard woke him up to say that Antonius was naked and standing down at the end of the dock.
“So I walked down to the end of the dock and Karl was there staring out towards the ocean, naked. And again, I called his name and he didn’t react right away.”
Antonius couldn’t recall the incident when he spoke to him about it later, he said.
It’s believed to be the second case in B.C. where a sexsomnia defence has been raised. A man was acquitted in Provincial Court in Surrey in August after claiming he was asleep during an alleged sexual assault of his girlfriend.
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