A woman who duped her female friend into having sex by pretending to be a man has been jailed for six and a half years.
Gayle Newland, of Willaston, Cheshire, created a “disturbingly complex” online persona to achieve her own “bizarre sexual satisfaction”, carrying on the deceit for more than two years.
The 27-year-old was found guilty at a retrial at Manchester Crown Court in June of committing sexual assault by penetration, using a prosthetic penis without her blindfolded victim’s consent.
Newland sobbed and slumped to the floor of the dock as sentence was handed down on Thursday.
She was originally jailed for eight years in November 2015 after she was convicted of the same offences.
But the conviction was later quashed on the grounds that the trial judge’s summing up of the case was not fair and balanced.
Newland received concurrent terms of six years for three counts of sexual assault committed in 2013.
She was handed an extra six months in jail for an offence of fraud committed between March 2014 and September 2015.
Reporting restrictions on the fraud matter were lifted on Thursday by the Recorder of Manchester, Judge David Stockdale QC.
The defendant admitted defrauding her former employers, an internet-based advertising agency, of £9,000 by creating fake client profiles.
The retrial jury was not told of the fraud conviction until it had returned its verdicts.
