A 27-year-old who tricked a blindfolded friend into having sex with her has been jailed after a retrial.
Gayle Newland, from Willaston in Cheshire, duped her female acquaintance into intercourse by wearing a prosthetic penis and creating a fake male online Facebook account.
Newland was originally convicted of three sexual offences in 2015 and jailed for eight years, but her conviction was quashed as the judges summing up of the case was not balanced.
Now a fresh trial has found Newland guilty of the original three offences, and sentenced her to six and a half years in prison.
“Truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction,” said Judge David Stockdale QC while sentencing. “The truth, the whole truth, here is as surprising as it is profoundly disturbing.”
“It is difficult to conceive of a deceit so degrading or so damaging for the victim upon its discovery.”
Newland had pretended to be a man called Kye Fortune for two years online, and had persuaded her victim to wear a blindfold each time they met.
During the retrial, the victim said she only found out she was actually having sex with a woman when she finally took off her mask.
She said: “There was no point until the day I took the blindfold off that I thought for one second that a woman was the person behind this.
“Every time I met up with Kye Fortune, I either had the mask on already or he would wait outside the door and I would put it on.”
The woman claims that Newland had manufactured the fake identity, and disguised her appearance in real life by binding her breasts and wearing a hat, in order to pass as the fictional man and trick her into sex.
She added that they had spent more than 100 hours together, but Kye has claimed to have insecurities about his appearance due to a previous car crash.
Newland had denied concealing her gender and claimed both women were gay and struggling with their sexuality when they met and had sex.
She also claimed the persona of Kye was part of a role play.
However, a new jury found her guilty on three counts of sexual assault and she was sentenced at Manchester Crown Court.
She will now serve six and half years in prison.
