One British woman’s catfishing turned extreme IRL-catfishing has landed her in jail for eight years, a judge ruled today. The 25-year-old Marketing manager Gayle Newland of Willaston, Cheshire was sentenced for five counts of sexual assault after passing herself off as a man, going so far as to using a prosthetic penis, and tricking her friend into sex.
Newland pretended to be a man named Kye Fortune for whom she created a fake Facebook profile, befriending the victim and later starting an online and phone relationship with her, which would go on for two years before the two met in person. She reportedly tried to lower her voice,imitating a man, but still sounded high-pitched to the victim, though she never suspected anything. Disguising herself as a man consisted of Newland wearing bandages to flatten her breasts and a swimsuit to conceal her body. The ruse continued as Newman forced the victim to wear a blindfold whenever they were together, including during sex, because he was self-conscious about his physical appearance after a supposed car accident and a tumor-removing brain surgery. Until one day the victim took off her mask and discovered it was Newland, who had befriended her.
Newland reportedly screamed ‘I’m scared’ to her family before she was taken away after the ruling by Judge Roger Dutton.
Dutton told Newland what she had done was a 'cruel and callous deception.’ He also said, 'You pursued this course of conduct over a lengthy period during which you played with her affections, acting entirely for your own sexual satisfaction and choosing to ignore the devastating impact that the eventual discovery of the truth would have on her.'
Dutton’s ruling has since been criticized with his lenient rulings of other cases, including a case last year where he sentenced a pedophile who had abused over 20 boys ages 8 to 13 in the 1970s to only six and a half years in prison compared to Newland’s eight.
Newland reportedly created the “half-Filipino, half-Latino” Fortune back when she was 13 because she didn’t know how to speak to girls in real life.
[via Daily Mail]
