Convicted sex molester, Alan Walker, bids to clear his name

Alan Walker, 50, of Nook Farm, Rochdale, who was jailed for molesting a woman, despite claiming he suffered from ‘sexsomnia’, has launched a bid to clear his name in an Appeal Court test case.

Walker was jailed for two years in March 2012 after being found guilty of sexual assault at Burnley Crown Court but has always claimed his innocence claiming he was asleep at the time of the incident.

He has now launched a challenge at London’s Criminal Appeal Court, with his lawyers arguing that his trial was unfair because the judge misdirected the jury.

The prosecution case against Walker was that he assaulted the woman at a house party in Lancashire in 2011. The victim, who was in her 20s at the time, said she awoke to find him molesting her.

At the time Walker denied any wrong doing and claimed he suffered from ‘sexsomina’ and was asleep at the time of the incident.

Sexsomnia, like sleep walking, is known as a parasomnia, an abnormal activity that occurs during a specific kind of sleep.

Despite this, the jury rejected his account and found him guilty.

His lawyers argued that the trial judge’s directions to the jury meant they could hold his ‘old irrelevant’ previous convictions against him when it came to considering his credibility.

They said the judge should have directed the jury to treat him as a ‘man of good character’.

Walker has eight previous convictions for dishonesty but none for sexual offences.

Lawyers representing the Crown argued that his previous convictions meant that he was not entitled to such a generous direction and the trial judge made no error.

Lord Thomas, Sir Brian Leveson, Lady Justice Hallett, Mr Justice Coulson and Mr Justice Globe, reserved the court’s decision on the appeal until an unspecified date.

The appeal is being heard alongside a number of other cases by five of the country’s most senior judges as it raises an important legal point about trial judge’s directions to jurors about a defendant’s credibility.

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