The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in our bedrooms
The sexual assault of sleeping women: the hidden, horrifying rape crisis in our bedrooms
A recent survey suggested a shockingly high proportion of women have been sexually assaulted by a partner as they slept. Now more and more are speaking out.
Anna Moore
Tue 15 Jun 2021 05.00 EDT
Niamh Ní Dhomhnaill had been with her partner for almost a year when she discovered that he’d been raping her while she slept. At the time, she was 25, and a language teacher in a Dublin secondary school. Her partner, Magnus Meyer Hustveit, was Norwegian. The couple had moved in together within a few months of meeting, but things were tense. It wasn’t a happy relationship.
On that particular night, Ní Dhomhnaill had been out with Hustveit and other friends, but left early, alone, because she felt unwell. “I’d only drunk water but I’d gone to bed and was out for the count,” she says. “I didn’t hear Magnus come back, which is unusual because I’d always been a light sleeper.”
When she did wake, she was no longer wearing her pyjama bottoms and had semen on her body. Magnus was sleeping beside her.
“I asked him: ‘Did you have sex with me while I was asleep?’ and he said, ‘Yes.’ I was so shocked and really confused. How could I not have known? I felt really ill, too, I was trying to figure it all out. I said: ‘I can’t give consent when I’m asleep. Don’t ever do that again.’”
www.theguardian.com
