"Charges Dropped Days Before Trial After My Rape Report: Accused of Being a Sexsomniac"

WAKING on a sofa, her necklace broken and realising she was half-naked, Jade McCrossen-Nethercott felt horrifically like she had been raped as she slept.

It’s every woman’s worst fear. But for Jade what happened next was actually more traumatising.

Jade McCrossen-Nethercott reported being raped to the police… and was labelled a sexsomniac Credit: Supplied The decision was made following two reports from sleep experts who had never even spoken to her Credit: BBC

Because in an extraordinary chain of events the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who originally took on Jade’s case, dropped the rape charge against her alleged attacker at the 11th hour.

The reason is because they said she had – an incredibly rare but recognised condition where you have sex or take part in other sexual acts while you’re asleep.

Jade, now 34, has always maintained this to be untrue and in 2024 was rewarded £35,000 by the CPS who admitted they were wrong not to take her case to trial and apologised to her.

Telling her story Jade, who lives in South London but is originally from Cornwall, recalls the morning she says she was raped i n 2017.

“I’d been out the night before,” says Jade, who has set up a campaign group called Make Yourself Heard, which advocates for women’s rights. “It was a fun evening, we were just drinking and chatting. There were party vibes.”

Afterwards she went to the house of a friend where a group of acquaintances stayed up drinking, although Jade wasn’t drunk.

“Around 2am I decided to go to sleep and was offered the sofa which I accepted,” she recalls. “I fell asleep in all my clothes with just a blanket over me but woke up at around 5.30am with my trousers around my ankles, my necklace broken and a feeling of having been raped.”

She describes herself “bolting up”, pulling her trousers up and confronting the man who she alleges raped her.

Then, she says, she left the building and called her best friend with whom she’d been just hours earlier.

“I was distraught,” she recalls. “I told her that I thought I’d been raped. She was horrified and contacted the .”

Two male officers arrived and Jade, who has been in a relationship for a decade, was taken for forensic tests. Vaginal swabs detected semen which matched the man she alleges raped her.

The suspect made no comment during initial interviews with police, but the CPS made the decision to charge him with one count of rape.

A date was set for Jade’s in 2020. “I prepared for it,” she says. “I visited the court, looked around and got to see what it was like.

“I was nervous but knew it had to go ahead.”

So, she was shocked when just three days before it was due to start, with the accused having pleaded not guilty, Jade learnt it would not be happening.

“I was called into a meeting at the station with lawyers from the CPS,” she remembers.

“They told me two sleep experts have given their opinions on my case and it was possible I had suffered an episode of sexsomnia and could have appeared to have consented.”

The law says a person cannot be guilty of rape if there was “reasonable belief of consent.”

“I was astonished,” Jade says. “I’d never even heard of sexsomnia until they mentioned it. It meant the defendant would be formally acquitted without a trial.”

Jade says she has never had sexsomnia episodes. The decision to acquit without a trial was based on questions asked during interviews.

“When I was giving a formal statement, a police officer asked if I had ever sleepwalked and I had said I had a few times when I was a teenager,” she says.

This one comment prompted the defence to hire a sleep expert who wrote a report that suggested she had sexsomnia.

It said: “Her behaviour would have been of someone actively engaging in sexual activity with eyes open and showing pleasure.”

The CPS then hired their own expert who concluded: “A history of sleepwalking, even once at the age of 16 years, and ongoing sleep talking or any family history, is entirely adequate to establish a predisposition to sexsomnia.”

Jade says: “But neither expert even met me. I was speechless that these conclusions could have been drawn without my involvement or a sleep study.”

She hired her own expert who said she had mild sleep apnoea – where you temporarily stop breathing – and snores. The expert couldn’t conclude either way whether she had an isolated incident of sexsomnia.

“I believe I didn’t have sexsomnia,” she says. “So I consulted Barrister Allison Summers, who has defended in cases where the defendant had claimed he’s had sexsomnia. She said sleep experts can almost never say for certain.”

Meanwhile CPS guidelines say sexsomnia and sleepwalking defences should always be “robustly challenged” in court. So she submitted her appeal to a Victim’s Right to Review.

A Chief Crown Prosecutor, separate from the CPS office that decided to drop her case, looked at the evidence again.

The prosecutor said the case should have gone to court and been challenged. Jade explains: “He said, ‘I cannot begin to imagine what you have been through and how you feel. I noted during my review the devastating effect of this case on you. I apologise unreservedly for this on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service, although I appreciate that it is likely to be of little consolation to you.’”

Jade says: “He was right. It has been devastating. I should have had my case taken to court. I spent the money I was awarded on my campaign group where people can share their own experience of the justice system. I hope to make a charity one day.

“I am only glad the CPS acknowledged what happened, although it doesn’t take away my trauma.”