According to the The Guardian, a U.K. woman named Gayle Newland has been accused of pretending to be a man and duping a woman into having a relationship with her male alter ego that included sexual intercourse. The case is currently unfolding at Chester Crown Court with both women taking the stand and giving two different, and bizarre accounts of what transpired between them.
Newland, who is 25, has a fake online profile for a man she named Kye Fortune. She has admitted to the court that she created the male persona when she was 13 years old once she realized she was attracted to women but was unable to come to terms with her sexuality. She hid behind the Kye Fortune identity while she communicated with girls in online chat rooms and eventually created profiles for Fortune on MySpace and Facebook.
The victim, whose name is being withheld for legal reasons, has testified that she struck up an online relationship with Fortune on Facebook unaware that she was being catfished. After two years of cyberdating, they began to meet in person and have sexual encounters and were even engaged at one point, but the complainant never saw Kye. She willingly agreed to be blindfolded for the duration of all of their meet-ups because she was led to believe that Fortune was recovering from treatment of a brain tumor and did not want her to see him. It wasn’t until she removed the blindfold after a failed attempt at performing fellatio on Fortune that she discovered his penis was really a strap-on dildo — and that Kye was really Gayle.
“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 victim testified in court.
Newland, however, claims that her paramour was always aware of her true identity and is in actuality a closeted lesbian. According to her, the two met at a nightclub a few years ago where Newland shared that she met women online using her Kye Fortune alter ego. Newland stated that the victim was a willing participant in their relationship and used Fortune to fulfill some sort of sexual fantasy through role-playing. As for Kye’s brain tumor, Newland explainedthat since “no one knew [the complainant] was gay” she fabricated the storyline as a way to prevent her family from meeting Fortune aka Newland.
Apparently, Mr. Fortune gets around. Shortly after Newland’s arrest, another woman came forward and revealed that she had also been catfished by the accused but figured out her true identity before meeting in person.
The case of she said, she said continues to play out in court. If convicted, Gayle Newland is facing five counts of sexual assault.