A GERMAN cop who slipped off a condom during sex with his girlfriend without her knowing has been found guilty of sexual assault.

The couple were having sex in November last year when he secretly removed the despite her “explicitly requesting” him to wear one.

This practice has come to be known as “stealthing”.

When she realised he had taken off the condom she fled his flat and called the police, fearing she may have been given an STI.

The 36-year-old man was tried in Berlin for rape and claimed he took the condom off because it had ripped and that he didn’t ejaculate inside his partner.

He was not found guilty of rape because the sex was consensual but was found guilty of sexual assault for removing the condom without permission.

The man was given an eight-month suspended jail sentence, fined £2,712 and told to pay £87 for the woman's STI test, CNN reports.

The case is believed to be the first of its kind in Germany and a couple of similar cases in Switzerland and Canada also both ended in convictions, one for rape and one for sex assault respectively.

Legal expert Pauline Wright explained that consent is defined as voluntarily agreeing to sexual intercourse, which would be breached by secretly removing a condom.

Stealthing often goes undetected until victims contract an STI or fall pregnant.

US Legal expert Alexandra Brodsky wrote on the topic in the Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, advocating for a new civil law that would specifically name the practice as "nonconsensual condom removal," in order to help victims get justice.