A woman accused of pretending to be a man to lure a fellow student into bed has told a jury that her alleged victim was in on the deception and was a closeted lesbian.

Gayle Newland, 25, has admitted creating a fake Facebook profile in order to meet girls, using a photo of a good-looking Asian man she called Kye Fortune. But she denies misleading a woman who claims she was sexually assaulted by Newman wearing a prosthetic penis after they had intercourse, during which the woman wore a blindfold.



Newland denies five counts of sexual assault between February and June 2013. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had earlier testified to having willingly worn the blindfold during numerous sexual encounters with someone she believed was Kye Fortune. She said Kye told her he was recovering from a brain tumour and did not want her to see his scars. Opening the case earlier this week, the prosecuting barrister, Matthew Corbett-Jones, told the jury the complainant was “by her nature a very gullible and ... naive person.”

Giving evidence on Wednesday at Chester crown court, the complainant said: “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.”

She said the penny did not even drop when she once saw Newland drive away from her flat after she had had sex with Kye and taken her blindfold off. The woman said: “If I could go back and scream at me, I would. It does look ridiculous on paper.”

The court heard that the pair spent at least 100 hours together in person after striking up an intense online relationship over two years, and even became engaged. At each meeting, the complainant wore a blindfold, not just when they had sex but when they sunbathed or watched films together and even on one occasion when they went out in Kye’s car. The woman told the court she only uncovered the deception after ripping her blindfold off and seeing she had actually been having sex with Newland.

The jury was shown packaging found in Newland’s flat after her arrest, which had contained an “ultra cyberskin penis”. Her alleged victim testified that it was the same as the one she had seen strapped to Newland when she removed her blindfold.

The court also heard how the couple would spend time together before the dramatic denouement of their relationship. They would sometimes watch a film on television, the woman said, adding: “I would not say ‘watch’ because I had a mask and scarf on. I heard a film.”

Nigel Power QC, representing Newland, suggested the woman’s version of events was not credible. He said: “There was Kye, the love of your life, your fiancé, making you sit through a film for more than an hour and a half and you could not see?”

She replied: “Throughout the film we were talking, we were kissing, we were cuddling, it felt nice.”

The barrister said: “I am not going to suggest for a moment that there have not been difficulties in your life before you met Gayle, but it is just not normal to spend hours in your flat with your boyfriend watching television when you cannot see what is on the screen. That is not normal by anyone’s standards.”

The complainant replied: “For us, that was what was normal. In hindsight, I wish I had ripped that mask off sooner. There was nothing wrong with me lying there listening to the heartbeat of the man I loved.”

The woman told the court that Kye took her on a car ride one day in which he asked her to wear sunglasses on top of her mask and scarf because “he did not want it to look weird or that she had been kidnapped”.

She said the car parked up, she was led out and walked into a building, up some steps and then into a garden where they sunbathed together. The witness told the court she thought the journey was “a breakthrough” because Kye was willing to be seen in public.

Giving evidence on Wednesday, Newland, of Willaston, on the Wirral, said the complainant knew full well who she really was when the pair met for sex. She said she had told the woman about her online persona and that the woman added Kye Fortune on Facebook after the pair met in a Chester nightclub.

She said she originally created the male persona when she was 13 because she knew she was attracted to girls but found it difficult to talk to them as herself. Newland told the jury: “I’m pretty sure every single person in my school was straight. It’s not a conversation we ever had.”

The said she began using the alter ego on chat rooms and then later on social networks including MySpace, Bebo and Facebook. Newland admitted stealing pictures of an American man in order to carry out her deception.

She broke down in the witness box when asked to explain why she created Kye. “I had never spoken to any gay people and especially in those years you didn’t see gay people on television. It was quite a negative thing. I just felt that speaking to people [in real life] I couldn’t really be myself.”

She said she first met the complainant in the summer of 2011 during a gay night at a nightclub. Newland claimed the other woman asked her if she was gay and remarked that she didn’t look like a “typical lesbian”.

She said they met again in the club and had an intense conversation in the toilets. Newland told the jury: “She told me that no one knew she was gay, that she couldn’t admit it to herself.” She said she told the woman about talking to girls online as Kye Fortune, and that a couple of days later the woman added Kye Fortune as a friend on Facebook.

The complainant’s version of events was rather different. She told the court that she received a Facebook friend request out of the blue from what she understood to be an Asian man named Kye Fortune. After three or four months of intense online communication, Kye told her he had a close friend called Gayle Newland. In due course, Newland and the complainant became friends. The complainant said that she was not a lesbian, and also said she didn’t realise Newland was gay either.

When Kye spoke to the complainant on the phone, he said he had a higher pitched voice due to being half Philippine, and explained that his voice and Newland’s were similar because they had grown up together and been friends since childhood.

After Newland was arrested on 4 July 2013, police discovered that another woman had been in extensive Facebook contact with Kye Fortune. In a statement read to the court, the woman said the pair would often use the iPhone video messaging app, Facetime, but that Kye wouldn’t show his face, just whatever he was looking at, such as his dog, Gypsy.

It was only when the woman spotted what she knew to be Kye’s dog in a picture she happened upon on Facebook – a photo of Gayle Newland – that she worked out his true identity. She confirmed this by phoning Kye’s number and asking for Gayle, who said: “Speaking.” They never met. The case continues.