Fake penis sex offender Gayle Newland, from Willaston, is appealing her conviction for three counts of sexual assault.
The 25-year-old marketing manager, of Hooton Road, was sentenced to eight years behind bars at Chester Crown Court last week, after duping her friend into a two-year relationship by pretending to be a man undergoing treatment for a brain tumour.
Newland befriended her victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, on Facebook using the male alter-ego she created when she was 13-years-old - that of Kye Fortune - and demanded she wear a blindfold whenever they met to conceal her true identity, using a fake penis to sexually assault her.
She was found guilty on three counts by a jury in September, but cleared of two sexual assaults which were alleged to have occurred at a Travelodge in the city centre and the Dene Hotel in Hoole .
Legal challenge
A Court of Appeal spokesman said: “We have received an application of leave to appeal against conviction.”
While she lodged the appeal against her conviction in October, she is yet to lodge a challenge on her eight-year jail term - for which the paperwork must be submitted within 28 days.
A High Court judge will consider her case and if successful, it will be forwarded to a panel of three judges who will decide the strength of her conviction.
They could decide to quash the guilty verdicts or order a retrial.
If the appeal is refused, Newland's legal team could reinstate it and try to overturn it one final time.
Her victim, who said in a victim impact statement that she felt ‘trapped in an invisible prison of Gayle’s making', only discovered the truth about her 'boyfriend' when she ripped off her blindfold during one of their encounters at her flat to see Newland standing there wearing a prosthetic.
Sentencing her on Thursday (November 12), Judge Roger Dutton called her an ‘intelligent, obsessional, highly manipulative, deceitful, scheming and thoroughly determined young woman’ and said she had committed a 'callous breach' of the trust her friend had in her.
