Woman Faces 'Significant' Sentence After Posing As Man To Trick Friend Into Sex

Woman Faces 'Significant' Sentence After Posing As Man To Trick Friend Into Sex

A woman who tricked a friend into sex by pretending to be a man will be sentenced on Thursday.

Gayle Newland created a "disturbingly complex" online persona to achieve her own "bizarre sexual satisfaction" carrying on the deceit for over two years.

A jury at Manchester Crown Court last month found Newland, from Willaston in Cheshire, guilty of committing sexual assault by using a prosthetic penis without her blindfolded victim's consent, following a retrial.

The "manipulative, deceitful and very crafty" 27-year-old told her victim, also in her 20s, to wear a blindfold at all times when they met and she only found out she was having sex with Newland when she finally took off her mask.

Newland created a fictional Facebook profile, pretending to be a half-Filipino half-Latino man called Kye Fortune, using an American man's photographs and videos.

The defendant spent "hundreds" of hours talking on the telephone to her friend as Kye telling her "emotionally vulnerable" victim "he" was undergoing treatment for cancer and was paranoid about his physical appearance.

She agreed demands for her to wear a blindfold at all times during sexual encounters and while watching television, going on a car journey and even sunbathing.

Newland claimed both women were gay and struggling with their sexuality when they met up and had sex, with her as Kye, during role-play.

She denied concealing her true identity but was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault and cleared of a fourth count.

Newland was jailed for eight years in November 2015 after she was convicted of the same offences by another jury at Chester Crown Court.

But the conviction was quashed in the Court of Appeal last December and a retrial ordered after it was ruled the trial judge's summing up of the case was not fair and balanced.

Newland, who graduated from the University of Chester with a degree in marketing and creative writing, wailed "I can't go back to jail," after being found guilty a second time.

She was bailed by the Recorder of Manchester, Judge David Stockdale QC, but he warned a "significant" custodial sentence was likely, when he passes sentence later on Thursday at Manchester Crown Court.

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