A woman convicted of impersonating a man over two years in an "astonishing deception" to trick her female friend into sex after a retrial cried in the dock as she said "I can't go back to jail".

Gayle Newland, 27, created a "disturbingly complex" online persona to achieve her own "bizarre sexual satisfaction".

A retrial jury at Manchester Crown Court found her guilty of committing sexual assault by using a prosthetic penis without her victim's consent.

The defendant cried in the dock, shook her head and at one point said: "I can't go back to jail." One of the female jurors was visibly upset and struggling to hold back tears as Newland became distressed.

The Recorder of Manchester, Judge David Stockdale QC, granted Newland bail ahead of sentencing on July 20. But he told her the "overwhelming likelihood" was that she would receive "a significant immediate custodial sentence".

Newland, of Willaston, Cheshire, was jailed for eight years in November 2015 after she was convicted of the same offences by another jury at Chester Crown Court.

But the conviction was quashed in the Court of Appeal last December and a retrial was ordered after it was ruled that the trial judge's summing up of the case was not fair and balanced.