LITERALLY UNBELIEVABLE

Woman Who Convinced Her Girlfriend She Was a Man By Making Her Wear a Blindfold for Years Convicted of Strap-On Sex Assault

The woman, who pretended to be a half-Filipino man and cited the Matthew Perry movie “17 Again” as part of her defense, was found guilty by a jury on Tuesday.

In one of the most bizarre sex cases to come before the British courts in recent years, a woman was today convicted of sexually assaulting her friend by impersonating a man and penetrating her with a prosthetic penis.

Gayle Newland, 25, had sex with her “naïve and vulnerable” friend, who is not being identified for legal reasons, approximately 10 times over two years, but convinced her victim to wear a blindfold whenever they were together.

The court heard that Newland had first created a fake Facebook profile of a fictional half-Filipino, half-Latino male accident victim named Kye Fortune when she was 13, and used the identity to approach women.

Newland initially approached her victim as Fortune over the Internet, saying that he was so ashamed of his appearance following the accident and surgery for a brain tumor that he would only agree to meet up if she wore a mask, so she would not see his face.

The victim was required to follow other rules when they met, which included not touching Kye’s penis.

Kye subsequently arranged an introduction between the victim and his best friend, Newland.

The victim—described in court by her legal team as “naïve and vulnerable”—finally ripped off her mask during a sexual encounter in a hotel to discover her friend standing over her wearing a strap-on penis.

After discovering the truth, the victim texted Newland saying, “How could you do this to me for two years? You have been a fake, you have manipulated me. Fake life, fake love. Are you for real? You should be locked up for what you have done. You really are a piece of work. I have just one question, why me?”

The victim told the court that whenever she met up with Kye she would either have the mask on or he would wait outside the door while she donned it. She told the court, “I was so desperate to be loved. It's pathetic… I told my friends I was engaged to a guy. I told my work colleagues.”

She said she would have preferred to have been raped by a man because she could not rationalize what had happened.

The victim told the court that her friend tried to explain away her extraordinary deception by comparing it to the movie 17 Again, in which Matthew Perry (Chandler from Friends) is transported into the body of Zac Efron.

The victim’s suspicions were first triggered when she spotted a picture of Kye’s dog—which she had seen in a Facetime call—on Newland’s real Facebook page. After hearing the verdict in court today, Newland, who had claimed her victim knew her true identity but was engaged in roleplay because she was conflicted about her sexuality, protested her innocence.

“How can you send me down for something I have not done?” she shouted. “I don’t understand! I don’t understand.”

The jury of eight women and four men convicted the defendant, after reaching majority verdicts on which 10 of them agreed on three counts of sexual assault. Newland was cleared of two other counts of sexual assault.

The judge said it is “inevitable” that she will be jailed, and Newland was warned not to contact anyone under an assumed identity before sentencing.

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Tom SykesEuropean Editor at Large

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