A YOUNG man who got into bed with another man’s girlfriend and sexually molested her while sleepwalking has been given a two-year supervision order.

Whenever he sleeps away from home for the next five years, Dale Kelly, 21, must tell everyone under the same roof he is a sexsomniac – someone who can have sex while sleepwalking.

Judge Simon Hickey made the notification a condition of a five-year sexual harm prevention order.

He told Mr Kelly: “You do pose a risk to the victim and any female who might find themselves sleeping in the same household as you because as yet you have yet to undergo treatment.”

Mr Kelly must also register on the sex offenders’ register for the next five years, although he does not have a sexual conviction.

The judge made the orders at York Crown Court after a jury at the same court returned a rare verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity on Mr Kelly on a charge of sexual assault.

They had heard that the victim had gone to sleep with her boyfriend in a room a floor above Mr Kelly in a North Yorkshire house after all three had been out socialising.

About an hour later, she awoke to find Mr Kelly had got into the same bed as the couple and was sexually molesting her. He told police he didn’t know how or why he had done it.

Members of his family and friends gave evidence that he had slept walked in the past, and sleep experts for the prosecution and defence agreed he probably had slept walked when he got into the wrong bed.

Mr Kelly, of Cleveland Place, Peterlee, County Durham, denied sexual assault.

The jury were given options of acquitting him completely, convicting him of sexual assault, or of finding he had committed the act but had been sleep walking at the time. They chose the third option when they delivered their verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity.

The judge said following the verdict, two doctors had decided Mr Kelly didn’t need confining to a psychiatric hospital.

He made a supervision order with conditions aimed at helping Mr Kelly improve the way he prepares for sleep and how he sleeps, undertakes an alcohol awareness course and his drinking habits, and helping him deal with stress.

The order will be supervised by the probation service.

The judge warned Mr Kelly if he breaks either order, he could be brought back to court.