Within seconds of waking to find a man having sex with her after a night out together, a Sydney woman says she grabbed her phone and pressed record. “Was that consensual? Was it OK?” Timothy Malcolm Rowland asked the woman in the minute-long video, taken inside his Darlinghurst bedroom and tendered at his Downing Centre District Court trial this month. “What happened? Did something happen? Bad?” The woman, who cannot be identified, told him: “I don’t have anything to say.
” “I’m just gonna go home,” she said. “I’m leaving.” Rowland, 40, pleaded not guilty to sexual intercourse without consent, arguing he was suffering from an “episode of sexsomnia”, also known as “sleep sex”, in August 2022 and woke to find himself having sex with the woman.
Sexsomnia is a form of parasomnia such as sleepwalking and night terrors, the trial heard. It was not in dispute that the sexual act occurred or that Rowland suffers from the condition, but prosecutors alleged Rowland’s actions at the time were voluntary, and that he was awake and aware of what he was doing. Timothy Malcolm Rowland (centre) arrives at Downing Centre District Court with his lawyers.
Credit: Kate Geraghty A 12-person jury on Thursday found Rowland not guilty of sexual assault after a day of deliberations. Rowland breathed a sigh of relief and began crying, wiping his eyes with a tissue, as his family members embraced in the public gallery. Rowland’s barrister Elana Scoufis told the court.
