A woman who posed as a man undergoing cancer treatment to trick her female friend into sex using a strap-on penis and blindfold has been granted permission to appeal her conviction and eight-year jail sentence, the Chronicle can reveal.
Gayle Newland was put behind bars last November, having been found guilty of three counts of sexual assault following a high-profile trial at Chester Crown Court .
The Willaston marketing manager’s legal team launched challenges against her prison term and conviction in November, and a spokesman for the Court of Appeal has confirmed that one of its judges has given his permission for her appeals to be heard.
A panel of three judges will determine the strength of the former University of Chester student’s conviction and assess her sentence at a hearing at the Court of Appeal, the date of which is yet to be fixed.
Newland’s guilty verdicts could be quashed and a retrial could be ordered.
Last year’s so-called ‘Chester prosthetic penis trial’ heard that Newland seduced one of her friends online using the male alter-ego she created when she was just 13-years-old – that of Kye Fortune.
Her victim wore a blindfold at his request whenever they met because ‘Kye’ was insecure about his appearance after receiving treatment for a brain tumour.
Sentencing Newland on November 12, 2015, to eight years for each of the three counts to be served concurrently, Judge Roger Dutton branded her an ‘obsessional, highly manipulative, deceitful, scheming and thoroughly determined young woman’.
