A woman has received £35,000 in damages after the CPS wrongly dropped her allegation of rape because of a claim she could have had an episode of “sexsomnia”.
Jade Blue McCrossen-Nethercott, 32, went to police in 2017 after waking up half-naked and believing she had been raped as she slept.
A man was charged but on the eve of the trial in 2020 the case was suddenly dropped, after sleep experts suggested she may have had an episode of a rare disorder that causes a person to engage in sexual acts while sleeping.
Ms McCrossen-Nethercott appealed the decision to abandon the case, and in 2021 a chief crown prosecutor for the CPS apologised and conceded the case should have been pursued to trial.
She sued the CPS and has now received a £35,000 compensation payout.
The rape allegation cannot, however, be reopened as the defendant was formally found not guilty when the case was abandoned.
Ms McCrossen-Nethercott said the CPS had “taken me to the darkest points of my life”, and that it felt “like a big triumph to be able to hold them accountable”.
She was 24-years-old when she went out with a friend in South London for a night-out, and ended up curled up on a sofa, fully-dressed, at a friend’s house.
At 5am, she woke up to find she was naked from the waist down and her necklace broken on the floor.Ms McCrossen-Nethercott, believing she had been raped, confronted the man lying on the other end of the sofa, and he replied: “I thought you were awake.”
She broke down crying uncontrollably on the phone to a friend as she revealed “I think I’ve been raped”, and together they went to police.
In her interview, Ms McCrossen-Nethercott mentioned in passing that she had sleepwalked a few times as a teenager and was generally a deep sleeper.Then just as the trial was about to start, she was hit with the news that ‘sexsomnia’ was being used as a defence and the CPS had concluded its case had been fatally undermined.
"It came completely out of the blue, and it was baffling”, she said.
She started to investigate the case herself, requesting the expert reports, witness statements and test results.
She discovered a sleep expert for the defence had concluded, without meeting her, that while she does not have sexsomnia she may have experienced an isolated episode that night.
The CPS’s own expert had then found that "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".
"I don't see how this can be one isolated incident [of sexsomnia], that just so happens to be the time that somebody I would never have consented to have sex with had sex with me”, she told the BBC.
Ms McCrossen-Nethercott decided to sue the CPS with the support of the Centre for Women’s Justice to push for “systemic change”, to ensure similar mistakes could not be made again.
A CPS spokesperson said: “A settlement has been reached with Ms McCrossen-Nethercott, to whom we have apologised unreservedly, and we continue to wish her the very best going forward.
“We remain positive about the progress being made and recognise there is still a long way to go to improve outcomes for victims, so more people can come forward and report with confidence.”
