Gayle Newland: Woman Sent To Prison After Wearing Prosthetic Penis, Tricking Blindfolded Friend Into Sex

A British woman is headed to prison for nearly seven years after she put on a prosthetic penis and tricked a blindfolded friend into having sex.

Gayle Newland had been convicted in June on three counts of sexual assault, and this week, she was sentenced to six and a half years in prison, the New York Post reported. She had already been convicted and sentenced in November 2015, but that conviction was overturned.

The bizarre incident happened in 2011 after Newland had befriended the victim. Newland had created a fake Facebook page for a man named Kye Fortune, using pictures of an American man to build the character.

Newland somehow convinced her friend to enter into a relationship and would meet the victim while wearing a blindfold. According to the Guardian, the pair spent more than 100 hours together, going for drives and even “watching” movies together. The victim said she never knew that the man she knew as Kye Fortune was really Gayle Newland, even though the fake man had the same birthday, likes, and dislikes as Newland, the report noted.

The relationship eventually turned physical, with Newland wearing a prosthetic penis when the two had sex.

The victim, who was not identified in media reports, said she would not have consented to a relationship had she known the person was really Gayle Newland.

“There was no point until the day I took the blindfold off that I thought for one second that a woman was the person behind this,” the victim told the court.

Newland had been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, which the Guardian described as a condition where a person “experiences discomfort or distress” because of a mismatch between gender identity and biological sex. She was also diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, an eating disorder, and depression.

Great write up by @shattenstone on the #GayleNewland case. I feel she has been a victim of miscarriage of justice https://t.co/vaGMsrvagV

— Rhona Deb Little (@rhonadeblittle) July 15, 2017

The bizarre story made international headlines, with a media blackout being lifted in the wake of the trial. Many news outlets both in Britain and across the globe picked up on the strange circumstances.

The case’s media coverage itself drew a bit of controversy. The victim’s family, who reportedly did not know about the crime, learned about it after being contacted by a reporter from the U.K.’s Sun newspaper.

Absolutely awful. How the mother of Gayle Newland's victim heard the news pic.twitter.com/ouWKMTNOkW

— The Sun Apologies (@SunApology) July 20, 2017

Gayle Newland’s fraud extended to beyond the bizarre sex scheme. The court sentenced her to an additional six months for creating fake client profiles to defraud her former employer at an internet ad agency, the New York Post noted.

[Featured Image by Chris Ryan/Getty Images]