A MAN accused of molesting a woman after a Blackburn house-warming party has won a fight to clear his name after a jury accepted he had been asleep at the time.

Christopher Davies, 26, said by the woman to have groped her, was cleared of sexual assault after a three-day trial.

The defendant, who has no criminal convictions, had told police it did not happen but a court had been told how he now acknowledged it must have and he must have done it in his sleep.

Davies had told the jury he knew nothing about what happened.

The defendant's mother had told the court he had been a frequent sleepwalker as a child. An expert had told in a statement how sufferers had no recollection of sleepwalking episodes afterwards and sexual assaults had been known to happen during sleepwalking.

Davies, of Quebec Road, Blackburn, was discharged from the dock at Burnley Crown Court by Judge Alan Taylor.

The woman had claimed to the court how she went to sleep on the floor in the early hours after the party at a friend's home on Nightingale Close. Her ex-fiance was on one side of her, the defendant on the other and they were all under a duvet.

Not long afterwards, the woman told the jury, she had awoken to find Davies staring at her and with his hand down her pants His other hand was on her breast and when she asked Davies what he was doing, he made no response, turned over, and went back to sleep. Summing up, the judge said : "Sleepwalking is recognised as a total destruction of voluntary control, if that is what happened. If he was not in control of his actions, he is not guilty."