A woman who tricked her female friend into having sex by pretending to be a man for two years has been jailed for eight years.
The woman’s family seemed stunned by the severity of the sentence, with one of them saying: “That did not just happen.”
The curious case has been unfolding in Britain over many months, and many people struggling to get their heads around it.
The Mirror reports that Gayle Newland, now 25, created a fake identity of a boy called Kye the internet when she was 13, because she wasn’t sure how to approach girls in real life.
In 2013, she persuaded one her online friends –who thought she was a boy – to meet her in real life.
The court was told that Gayle wore a mask to the meeting and persuaded her friend ‘to put on a blindfold’ when they finally met up, because he (actually she) was embarrassed about his appearance after surgery for a brain injury.
According to testimony, they spent more than 100 hours together, with Gayle in her mask and the victim in a blindfold, watching TV and even sunbathing.
They had sex 10 times, but on the final occasion, the victim ripped off Gayle’s mask, and her own blindfold, and saw Gayle wearing a prosthetic penis.
Gayle was found guilty on three charges of sexual assault.
Judge Roger Dutton at Chester Crown Court described her as ‘scheming’, ‘deceitful’ and ‘highly manipulative’.
“He said the crime was so unusual he could depart from normal sentencing guidelines,” The Mirror reports.
“You were so convincing in your cruel deception of [the victim] she thought she had finally found a man she could love and be with.”
The prosecution said it was an “unusual case” set against an “extraordinary background” in which the defendant targeted the “naive and vulnerable” complainant.
Gayle’s legal team said the victim’s account was simply “impossible to believe” and that ‘a woman of her sexual experience could not have been tricked into thinking she had had sex with a man.’
