RTÉ journo given 15months for sexually assaulting woman as she slept

So touching someone is rape now? Hmmmmm......

She said no, he stopped.

There was no wiggle room in this case for an acquittal, the law is crystal clear, why he didn't just plead guilty and throw himself at the mercy of the court is either down to him or inept counsel.

Reading what his Barrister said in mitigation it sounds like inept counsel, 'she wasn't a blood relative'. Da Fuq?

The main aggregating factor was the victim impact statement, which IMO overshot the runway, things happened to her post crime that he could not have been held accountable for which led to her deteriorating mental health.

Victim statements are incredibly important but they also need to be tempered by a sentencing Judge when deciding on an appropriate punishment.

The judge hammered him, but at the same time oddly left a sliver of a window open, he has until close of business Friday to lodge an appeal and keep him out of Mountjoy.

Will be interesting to see what happens.

"He stopped when she said no" is fairly meaningless when he didn't have any right to start in the first place.

Whatever about what people think the law should be, that is what the law is. I don't see what's so hard to understand about that.

Right that might be advice to give a child, but surely the main point to teach a child is not to initiate sex with someone whose asleep. Right?

Are you talking about trying to teach the young lad how to behave decently or teach him that women are crazy bitches?

If the person was awake and was being punched were they also being assaulted

It is hard to be a man, I can't help thinking about all those women who raped me over the years.

Waking up because a woman was fondling me, waking up because she had her legs draped over me, waking up because she was sticking her tongue in my mouth, it very much distresses me to think what else happened while I was still asleep.

Lesson learned though, in the future if I have a one night stand she will have to **** off home before we fall asleep, just to protect myself.

That's not what the new law says at all.

If person doesn't realise they have failed asleep then I would say no. If they realise they have fallen asleep and just decide to keep going anyway then yes they are a rapist. If the person slapped on the ass feels its assault then they can report it to the Garda if that's what they want.

It's not rape because nothing went in. Rape requires penetration as far as I know, so it can't be rape but it is a sexual assault.

Yeah loads of people who initiate sex with someone who is asleep are putting themselves at risk of sexual assaulting the person. If they wake up and say they enjoyed it, then happy days. If they wake up and say they didn't enjoy it, it's sexual assault. It's pretty simple.

One night stands are different to longer term relationships in that the likelihood of it being sexual assault are lower. But ultimately, the crucial aspect is consent. If you chat with your partner and have consent to wake them up with a bit of action, then there's no real problem. But that's because they've dealt with consent.

How so many people are able to look at this and not see that it all hinges on consent, is baffling.

They get it, they're just pretending not to, which is a lot more disturbing.

If you chat with your partner and have consent to wake them up with a bit of action, then there's no real problem. But that's because they've dealt with consent

There is no such thing as a consent blank cheque to be cashed at some point in the future.

The law is clear, you cannot consent when you are asleep.

Some unlikely conversation between partners would not be a defence to that, unless it was an extremely recent conversation with specifics. Even at that, consent has to be 'ongoing' under the law.

Yeah that's one approach. But another approach is to be a grown up and chat about it.

Like, the question "do you like that" isn't just a rhetorical device to get the other person to tell you what a brilliant lover you are. It's also a genuine way to make sure the other person is having a good time and consenting to what they're both doing.

You're not trying to get sex FROM someone, you're trying to have sex WITH someone.

Maybe. But if you actually chat with your partner and tell them you'd like to be woken up with them touching you, that's different to doing it without ever discussing it. I don't know the specifics of the law so if you know them, I'll defer to you.