Here's a despicable boyfriend for you: A woman in the U.K. discovered that for two years, her live-in boyfriend had been raping her while she slept. Apparently the woman's boyfriend has a rare condition called somnophilia, which is when someone gets sexually turned on by sleeping people. Seriously?! Never heard of this. The woman, Naomi Hampson, only found out what was going on when her boyfriend, Robert Fryer, reportedly confessed what he was doing to a friend, who alerted police. When police raided their home and nabbed Fryer's computer, they found pictures of Naomi asleep, in sexually compromising positions, and dressed up in clothes and jewellry — he would even sometimes paint her fingernails. Could she really have slept through two years of rape?
Naomi had no memory of her sexual violations, and reportedly she was drinking more than usual because her father had been diagnosed with cancer. When she'd wake up in unusual positions, or in another room, or with her nails painted, her boyfriend would blame it on her drinking. But police believe he was sedating her on top of it. Naomi says her life has been destroyed. What a scumbag.
Somnophilia is an actual psychological condition — a predatory sexual paraphilia — of someone who finds sleeping people sexually arousing. It's in the same class of psychological disorders as pedophiles — who find children sexually arousing. Some of the signs of it include sexual urges when in proximity to a sleeping or unconscious person, or sexually fantasizing about them. It's also called "sleeping princess syndrome" — which is way too nice a name for what happened here.
if you ask me, this was about someone turned on by rape as well as sleeping. Fryer has been convicted of his crimes and sentenced to eight years in jail. My guess is he found it a turn on when he was in charge and his girlfriend couldn't fight back and had zero say in what was happening. He liked having power over a helpless person. I would hope that an honest somnophiliac would at least talk about this with their significant other and ask if they could ever have sex with them while asleep. Some people might say yes, who knows. Or the person could pretend to be asleep. But when you do it without any consent, that's rape. I don't care what "disease" you have.
If you find yourself thinking about having sex with sleeping people, get some help.
Have you heard of somnophilia?
Image via Rochelle Hartman/Flickr
