A woman accused of pretending to be a man in order to dupe her friend into sexual activity said she was engaging in role play and that the gender-switching was her friend’s sexual fantasy.
Gayle Newland, 25, broke down in the witness box at Chester crown court on Thursday as she described how much she loved the complainant and did not understand why her friend was accusing her of five counts of sexual assault.
Her alleged victim, who cannot be named, told the court earlier that she believed she was in a relationship with a man called Kye Fortune, whom she had met on Facebook. She described wearing a blindfold during all of their encounters, sexual and otherwise, because she believed Kye was body conscious after undergoing treatment for a brain tumour.
Giving evidence, Newland, who was studying for a degree in marketing and creative writing at the time of the alleged assaults, insisted the other woman knew “from the get-go” that she had a male alter ego called Kye Fortune.
She said she did not even try to differentiate Kye from herself, pointing out that she told the complainant they both had the same birthdays, and were both into “chickflicks” and R&B music, both had obsessive compulsive disorder and both had a dog called Gypsy. She insisted that when they talked on the phone she used when playing Kye, she never made any attempt to hide her voice.
She said it was the complainant who made up the lie about Kye having a brain tumour so that she did not have to introduce “him” to her family, who did not know she was a lesbian or that her “boyfriend” was really her friend Newland. She went along with the Kye scenario because “no one knew [the complainant] was gay. She always told everyone she was straight.”
Newland said at the time she had also yet to make peace with her own homosexuality. “I wasn’t comfortable enough to come out and say ‘I know I’m a lesbian’,” she told the jury.
But she admitted she had lied to another woman online when corresponding as Kye, saying she could not meet her because Kye had cancer. She was not proud of this lie, she said.
She insisted, however, that the complainant knew who Kye really was, and added “him” on Facebook after the two women met in a club in Chester and Newland told her she would chat to girls online as Kye.
Newland said it was the complainant who encouraged her to buy a £19.99 strap-on dildo and insisted that the other woman never wore a blindfold during any of their sexual encounters. The “blindfold” found during a police search was just a sleeping mask because she had trouble sleeping, she said.
Asked why the complainant went along with the Kye character, Newland said: “It was a combination … of role play and I think a sexual fantasy for herself,” she told the jury.
She denied ever binding her breasts with bandages to appear flat-chested and said she only put a condom on the dildo from time to time because the complainant preferred the sensation.
The complainant’s evidence is that she believed the penis was real until Newland suggested she lick it. She ripped the blindfold off when the dildo’s testicles didn’t feel right and said she was horrified to discover that Kye was really Newland.
Newland said she was shocked on 30 July 2013 when the complainant “just switched” when they were having sex with the strap-on. “She started saying, acting like she was almost shocked, like startled, and was saying: ‘What the hell? What’s this? What are you doing? I kept saying: ‘What do you mean?’”
She described the couple arguing and the complainant calling her “sick” and saying she never wanted to see her again. Newland said she was very mixed up about what had just happened and didn’t want to hurt the complainant: “I trusted every single word that came out of her mouth. I had no reason not to. I loved her. I was in love with her. Why would she lie to me?”
Newland sent a stream of text messages and an email apologising to the complainant, the court heard. In a long email she told the complainant she only felt herself living as Kye. She never intended it to go so far but that “it turned from a seed to a tree” and she could not get out of it.
Newland was asked by her barrister, Nigel Power, QC, why she sent such messages if she had been open from the start that she and Kye were the same person.
Newland said of the complainant: “She’s a weird character. She got set on stuff and you’ve got to roll with it, even if you don’t think it’s the truth. All I knew was: I needed her in my life. I loved her. I didn’t want to be without her. I couldn’t imagine being without her. Stupid, in love, or whatever the hell you want to call it, but I think I would have done absolutely anything, said absolutely anything … as ridiculous as it sounds, for her to stay in my life.”
The case continues.
