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Jailed: Woman, 27, who pretended to be male and wore prosthetic penis to dupe female friend into sex

A woman who pretended to be a man so she could dupe her female friend into having sex with her has been jailed for six and a half years.

Gayle Newland was found guilty at a retrial at Manchester Crown Court in June of committing sexual assault by penetration, using a prosthetic penis without her blindfolded victim’s consent.

The 27-year-old, from Willaston, Cheshire, created a “disturbingly complex” online persona to achieve her own “bizarre sexual satisfaction”, carrying on the deceit for more than two years.

Newland sobbed and slumped to the floor of the dock as sentence was handed down today.

Gayle Newland has been jailed for six and a half years for duping her female friend into having sex with her (PA)
Gayle Newland has been jailed for six and a half years for duping her female friend into having sex with her (PA)

She 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.

She 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.

The complainant agreed to demands for her to wear a blindfold at all times during up to 15 sexual encounters and while watching television, going on a car journey and even sunbathing.

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Newland had told her victim, also in her 20s, to wear a blindfold at all times when they met at the complainant’s flat.

She denied concealing her true identity and claimed both women were gay and struggling with their sexuality when they met and had sex, with her as Kye, during role-play.

Newland was originally jailed for eight years in November 2015 after she was convicted of the same offences.

Newland sobbed and slumped to the floor after her sentence was read out (PA)
Newland sobbed and slumped to the floor after her sentence was read out (PA)

But the conviction was later quashed on the grounds that the trial judge’s summing up of the case was not fair and balanced.

Newland received concurrent terms of six years for three counts of sexual assault committed in 2013.

Judge Stockdale told Newland: “She (the complainant) did not consent to these invasive acts of penetration because her willing compliance with your abusive behaviour was obtained by a deceit.

“This was a deceit of such subtlety and cunning in its planning and was a deceit, from your point of view, so successful in its execution that an outsider unaware of the full history of the case might find it difficult to comprehend.

“But truth can sometimes be stranger than fiction. The truth, the whole truth, here is as surprising as it is profoundly disturbing.”

The judge told Newland that her criminal act had been 'profoundly disturbing' (Pic: PA)
The judge told Newland that her criminal act had been ‘profoundly disturbing’ (Pic: PA)

He went on: “It is difficult to conceive of a deceit so degrading or so damaging for the victim upon its discovery.”

She was handed an extra six months in jail for an offence of fraud committed between March 2014 and September 2015.

Reporting restrictions on the fraud matter were lifted on Thursday by the Recorder of Manchester, Judge David Stockdale QC.

The defendant admitted defrauding her former employers, an internet-based advertising agency, of £9,000 by creating fake client profiles.

The retrial jury was not told of the fraud conviction until it had returned its verdicts.

Top pic: PA