Strangest Sleep Disorders (2)

"Sleepwalking homicide"

For some, the dream itself can be dangerous. In May 1987, 23-year-old man named Kenneth Parks stumbled into a police station in blood spattered clothes near Toronto, muttering, "I think some people have been killed with my own hands," according to a study Canadian case sleep expert Roger Broughton. Parks was right. Hours earlier, he had beaten his mother-in-law and father-in-law with a tire iron and stabbed with a butcher knife after breaking into her home in suburban Toronto, according to Broughton.

When his murder trial began, Parks admitted to killing his mother-in-law and attempting to kill his stepfather (who miraculously survived the encounter), but said they would not have done if he had been awake in time. Parks was the first defendant to claim should not be held responsible for what they do while sleepwalking because he could not control the actions voluntarily. A jury of Canada agreed with him.

In the years since Parks was acquitted of murder in 1988, dozens of defendants have argued with mixed success are innocent of murder by reason of "sleepwalking murderer," according to a study by Mark Pressman, disorders of sleep and arousal violent behavior: The role of the proximity and physical contact, "published by the Association of Professional Sleep Societies in 2006. Pressman is a specialist in sleep Lankenan Hospital in Wynnewood, Pa.

It has emerged sleepwalking defense in cases of sexual assault. In 2003, Canadian researchers coined "Sexsomnia in a document entitled" A New Sexsomnia parasomnia? " published in the Canadian Journal of Psychiatry as the name of a rare form of automation in which people carry out sexual acts in their sleep.

The researchers cited the case of an Australian woman to leave her house several times while sleeping and having sex with strangers as an example of the condition. Over the past three years, courts in Canada and Britain have accused acquitted on charges of rape that allegedly suffered from "sexsomnia", according to news reports.