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Woman guilty of tricking blindfolded friend into having sex by pretending to be a man
Woman guilty of tricking blindfolded friend into having sex by pretending to be a man
(about 3 hours later)
A woman has been convicted of impersonating a man over two years to dupe her blindfolded friend into having sex.
In a courtroom drama as confusing as it was compelling, a woman has been convicted of pretending to be a man and using a deep voice, a prosthetic penis and a blindfold to trick her female friend into having sex with her during a two-year relationship.
Gayle Newland, 25, disguised her appearance and voice as she demanded the other woman put on a blindfold when meeting up.
Gayle Newland, 25, persuaded her victim to wear a blindfold throughout the more than 100 hours they spent together during their relationship, which started online.
The pair had sex about 10 times until the complainant ripped off her mask and in disbelief saw Newland wearing a prosthetic penis.
Her 25-year-old victim told Chester Crown Court that she had kept the blindfold on during about 10 sexual encounters. She remained blindfolded when the pair were sunbathing together and even when they “watched” a film at her flat. The deception, she said, only ended when she pulled off the blindfold while they were having sex to see her friend Gayle wearing a strap-on prosthetic penis.
Newland claimed her accuser, also aged 25, always knew she was pretending to be a man as they engaged in role play while struggling with their sexuality, Chester Crown Court heard.
Gayle exclaimed: “It’s not what you think.”
She said no blindfold was used and she did not strap bandages to her chest and wear a woollen hat and swimsuit.
In her defence, Newland insisted that no blindfold was used during their relationship. She also denied strapping bandages to her chest to mask her breasts, claiming they were only there to protect a heart monitor.
The jury of eight women and four men convicted the defendant, from Willaston, Cheshire, of three counts of sexual assault.
Denying five counts of sexual assault, Newland, from Willaston, Cheshire, insisted her accuser always knew she was pretending to be a man, and that they had been engaging in roleplay while her friend struggled to come to terms with her lesbianism.
She was cleared of two other counts of sexual assault.
But the jury convicted Newland of three of the sexual assault charges while acquitting her of two others.
The jurors reached majority verdicts on which 10 of them agreed on each of the three guilty counts after six hours and 11 minutes of deliberation.
Judge Roger Dutton warned her that imprisonment was inevitable, but adjourned the case for pre-sentencing reports, explaining that Newland had “serious issues surrounding her personality”.
Newland was found guilty of committing sexual assaults at the complainant's flat but was cleared of similar offences said to have taken place at hotels in Chester.
Newland’s deception begun in 2011 when she sent her victim a Facebook friend request after setting up a fake account in the name of “Kye Fortune” by downloading photos from an American man’s Myspace page.
The defendant sat in stunned silence in the dock when the foreman returned the verdicts.
During online and phone communication, “Mr Fortune” told the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, that “he” had a close friend called Gayle Newland. The victim then became friends with Newland as well as Mr Fortune.
Adjourning the case for pre-sentence reports, Judge Roger Dutton told the court that Newland had "serious issues surrounding her personality".
The victim said she noticed that Mr Fortune and Newland, who at the time was a Chester University student, had “really similar accents, [but] his was just a bit deeper”. Describing how she fell for the con, she told the court: “When you Googled him, it came up with a Twitter account, Facebook account, a Bebo account. He seemed a feasible person. I’m still in shock... coincidences keep flashing in front of me, like how Gayle and Kye shared the same birthday.”
Addressing Newland, he said: "You have been convicted of serious charges. You must understand the consequences may be serious."
The pair finally met face-to-face in February 2013, but “Mr Fortune” insisted on the blindfold, claiming he was embarrassed about scars on his body from being involved in a car accident and receiving treatment for a brain tumour.
Newland shouted in response: "How can you send me down for something I have not done?"
The court heard how the victim also agreed to rules that included not touching Mr Fortune’s genitals.
She tearfully repeatedly asked the question and then said: "I don't understand, I don't understand."
As the romance blossomed, the victim said, they would sometimes snuggle up in front of a film. She added: “I would not say ‘watch’ because I had a mask and scarf on. I heard a film. For us, that was what was normal. In hindsight, I wish I had ripped that mask off sooner.”
The judge thanked the jurors for their "careful consideration" of the case and said it would present a "difficult sentencing exercise".
The couple eventually got engaged. The victim, who insisted she was not attracted to women, said: “I told my friends I was engaged to a guy. 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. I was so desperate to be loved. It’s pathetic.
He went on: "Sentencing guidelines are quite clear that imprisonment is inevitable but I need a good deal of further examination before I take that further step."
“If I could go back and scream at me, I would. It does look ridiculous on paper.”
Newland was bailed until sentencing on a date to be fixed in November.
The deception ended, she told the court, while they were having sex: “I grabbed for the back of his head and my hand got caught on something. It did not feel right.
She was told she must reside at an address provided to the court, not to contact the complainant and not to contact anyone under an assumed identity.
“Something in my mind said, ‘Pull it [the blindfold] off’. I just pulled it off. Gayle was standing there... I just couldn’t believe it.”
The judge said Newland would be seen by the Probation Service and a psychiatrist as part of the pre-sentence report.
As the judge told Newland she faced “serious consequences” after the jury returned their guilty verdict, she protested: “How can you send me down for something I have not done?” She repeated tearfully: “I don’t understand... I don’t understand.”
Newland admitted creating a bogus Facebook profile in the name of Kye Fortune but said her friend played along with her online persona.
The defendant spent "hundreds" of hours talking on the telephone to her friend as Kye and more than 100 hours in each other's company in hotels and the complainant's flat.
These encounters, according to the complainant, included her wearing a blindfold watching television and even sunbathing together, the trial heard.
The prosecution said it was an "unusual" case set against an "extraordinary background" in which the defendant targeted the "naive and vulnerable" complainant.
But Newland's legal team said the complainant's account was simply "impossible to believe".
Newland created the character of Fortune when she was 13 because she found it difficult to speak to girls in real life.
By the age of 15 or 16, she went on to develop a Facebook profile of "half-Filipino, half-Latino" Fortune by downloading photographs from an American man's Myspace page.
Fortune sent a Facebook friend request to the complainant in 2011 and the pair went on to communicate frequently on the telephone.
The complainant was told by Kye that he had been involved in a car accident and doctors subsequently detected a brain tumour.
He said he was having treatment in hospital and was not well enough to see her in person.
Fortune later "introduced" the complainant to his "best friend", Newland, who met up in person and became close friends themselves.
Fortune and Newland shared the same birth date, both liked RnB music and "chick flicks" and had a dog named Gypsy, the jury heard.
The pair finally met in February 2013 two months after Fortune had sent her an eternity ring in the post.
The complainant told the court: "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.
"I was so desperate to be loved. It's pathetic, so desperate for love, so desperate.
"We were just lying there, just cuddling, sometimes we would watch films, sometimes we would just talk. It sounds stupid to say but it was a proper relationship, just normal."
She went on: "Since the first time I wrote to this person on Facebook, I thought it was a male.
"The first time I agreed to meet this person and agreed to have sex with them, I thought it was a male.
"I told my my friends I was engaged to a guy. I told my work colleagues."
She said she was not attracted to women and said, although it sounded "sick", she would have preferred to be have been raped by a man because she could not rationalise it.
The jury heard that another woman said she had been duped by Newland into believing she was communicating with a man.
She said she added the "good looking" Fortune as a Facebook friend and an online relationship developed.
They went on to communicate by phone and she noticed that his voice was "quite high pitched".
The pair started off as friends but became closer and in time Kye referred to her as his girlfriend, the court heard.
She suggested to him that that they meet up but said he always came up with an excuse not to.
She used Facetime on her phone to speak to him in person but he would never show his face, she said.
Another Facetime conversation involved Kye said to be walking his dog, Gypsy.
The court heard that she discovered she had been in contact with Newland and not Fortune when she spotted the same dog by chance on the defendant 's Facebook page.
She phoned Fortune's number, asked for Gayle and immediately recognised from her voice that Fortune and Gayle were one and the same.
The woman stated: "I knew that Gayle Newland had pretended to be Kye Fortune.
