woman sent to prison for "sexual assault" for misrepresenting her gender

A woman who tricked another woman into having sex with her by pretending to be a man has been found guilty and sentenced to 8 years of prison, in the UK.

She was convicted of three counts of "sexual assault", despite the other woman having agreed to have sex.

Gayle Newland found guilty at retrial of tricking female friend into sex | UK news | The Guardian

In my opinion, this does sound like an excessive amount of punishment.
But what it does show is that it's not okay to misrepresent your actual gender, and that sex obtained through deception is a form of rape (albeit a very mild form, in my opinion).

A lesbian who pretended to be a man in an elaborate hoax has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a woman with a fake penis for a second time. Gayle Newland hid her own sex during a remarkable two-year deception after befriending her victim as both herself and with an online alter ego Kye Fortune. The couple are said to have had up to 10 sexual encounters with Newland using a strap on sex toy. The court had heard how the sexual predator had fooled her victim by insisting on her wearing a blindfold and tying her hands. During their time together the victim never suspected that Newland and her "fiance" were one and the same person.

The victim said she was heterosexual and had no idea that Newland was a lesbian. It was only after discovering Fortune was actually her best friend, she ran out of her own house in shock.
The jury was told the real issue of the case boiled down to consent: did the complainant really know she was having sex with her friend, or did she honestly think her sexual partner was a man she had met on the internet?​

 

It's actually an interesting decision. It's entirely a credibility case, of course. Basically the consent was based on a lie (if the victim is to be believed) of such a fundamental and crucial nature as to be void from a legal standpoint. I have read of similar decisions when the lie was about HIV status but this is the first time I have read about something like this when health or safety was not compromised by the lie.

 

The victim also tried to commit suicide after she found out, so no doubt that may have garnered additional sympathy from the jury.

 

You can make an argument on mental health. We could also equate it to lying about marital status, for which I would say a similar decision would be appropriate. I agree with the decision overall. My only fear is someone trying to make a false equivalency argument with transgender issues. I will say that, prior to sex, a transgender does have an an obligation to let their potential partner know of variations the person would probably not be expecting. For that matter a cis-gender person also has that obligation for unusual conditions of the body. Both partners have their preferences and deserve to have them honored, insofar as not being deceived as to the true nature of a person. This runs both ways, with a cis person pretending to be a trans person as an example. I want to stress that this obligation is only valid when moving to an intimate level, be it physically or emotionally. Early dating is not necessarily a needed time if physical intimacy isn't going to happen

 

Please tell us why this is not 100% equivalent to transgender issues.
Yes, obviously if a trans is upfront about all the "details" with their partner before sex (or marriage), no one is going to claim there is an issue of consent. I don't know why you would even bring that up; that should be obvious.

I could even see a potential of misunderstanding, where the trans person communicated to their partner that they were "trans", but the partner did not actually understand the terminology of what that meant. So the trans person thought they were being upfront but the consent of their partner was still violated.
(Probably would involve a lot of alcohol I am guessing, if the trans person did not take specific measures to intentionally further the deception)

 

I am putting aside the moral argument for now. We have zero disagreement there.

I can see how you could get a crime out of lying about the anticipated physical sex characteristics in the transgender case. In effect what you end up with is an example of exibitionism or 'flashing' even before any intimate conduct. If I am not expecting a penis or a breast, have no reasonable expectation that I am about to be exposed to one, and you lie about the fact I am about to see a penis or breast through your intentional conduct, you have committed a sex crime right there.

Our problem in this whole area of law is that way too much is thrown under the umbrella of 'sex crime' and that is why I think we need boundaries. We still have DAs treating a couple of hours of consensual 'sexting' of 16 yr old and an 17 yr old as a sex crime worthy of prosecution and lifelong membership on a sex crime listing despite the incredible damage it does to a kid's aspirations. I am having trouble seeing a man lying about his marital status as committing a 'sexual assault' in a criminal sense. That has not been criminal behavior in any western civilization in quite some time let alone a deemed an 'assault'. I can see it as being a civil tort case if someone has relied upon the truth of assertion to his or her economic detriment. For example if that lie and subsequent sex led to a pregnancy in anticipation of marriage, but no, I don't want the DA charging adulterers who lie to their mistresses as an assault or sexual assault regardless of how much mental distress they may cause.

 

I think you read that wrong. I think it was the 'perpetrator' who tried to commit suicide once the victim cut off all contact. My impression was that there was some real obsessive behavior behind this whole scenario.

 

This whole thing smells funny.

- As a woman, I can say with decades of experience, that there is no comparison between an actual penis and a toy.
- Cuddle time involves wandering hands.

I’m not buying it, unless the victim has a low mental capacity.

 

I wonder if this sets any kind of precedent for someone who lies about the size of their penis.

 

Well, maybe she had not had much experience so she wouldn't really know.

 

"I have a 9-incher. But wear this blindfold so you can't verify that I am telling the truth or not. Trust me..."

 

Not in this case. The perpatrator convinced the victim to be blindfolded and allow her hands to be tied up, so she couldn't use her hands to feel.

Read the details of the story, and the strategies this woman used to perpetrate the deception.

I agree that this woman must have been extremely gullible, and afterwards must've asked herself how she could've been that stupid. But I believe her.

 

So, they never spent any time together unless she was blindfolded? If that’s the sort of relationship she wanted, I’d say she got off on the mystery

not buying it.

 

My mistake, you are correct. It wasn't the victim who tried to commit suicide.

 

Well, why did two different separate juries still convict her?

 

I don’t know. Crazy stuff happens everyday. People sleep with people who misrepresent themselves, all the time. Many thousands of times a day, I’ll bet. I guess we will start seeing where the line is.

“I told him I only sleep with lawyers, he’s not a lawyer.”
“I told him I don’t do married men,”
“I told him I hate meat eaters, and I caught him with KFC.”

I will research the story further, but, truly, if you don’t know what your partner looks like naked, you aren’t ready for sex. That’s just me, though, maybe.

Buyer beware. Watch The Crying Game…lol

 

Transgenders are deranged individuals. My brother in law married one and I’m here to say that they are F’d up in every way imaginable. They don’t think they’re gay even if the only entry is from the rear. They believe that they are truly a woman. It’s un flipping believable. I’m big time anti transgender. It’s a mental disorder I’m a firm believer in that.

how do you differentiate between gay and transgender if that transgender prefers the same sex they were born with to have intercourse with? There idea of a gay transgender is a woman who became a man that prefers a man. But a straight transgender would be a woman who became a man but prefers women.

The couple I know even threatened to sue me because I refuse to acknowledge him as a her.

 

Deranged is such an ugly word. When they were in the womb, their genitals developed separately from the brain’s sense of gender.

if the surgery cures them, I see no harm. It has helped several of my friends overcome the disconnection they felt.

It doesn’t help everyone, and their are certainly loons out there mis-representing an entire group. Well, that happens to be true for every group known to man. I certainly don’t want to be painted with the same brush as the looniest bipolar people in the world.

The noisiest of any group are usually in the minority and don’t speak for the rest.

 

sad case, no way consensual sex should get you 8 years

 

or their wallet

the problem here is that consent is being twisted, having sex 10 times over 2 years and consenting every time - sorry, this case is like in the old days when white people did not like black men having sex with white women and punished them for it.. even if consensual

 

Yes, that was what I stated in my opening post. She should still be punished, but something like 1 or 2 years would have been more appropriate.
In this case maybe even less, because the victim was so stupid to fall for something like that.

Oh, I totally agree that she was "raped". But there is a wide spectrum of different types and severities of rape. This wasn't really so much what people would call "rape rape".

 

The question isn't whether this woman consented to have sex with the other individual. The question is did she consent to have sex with a woman.

Feminists are always demanding affirmative consent, and saying women should be able to send men to prison if the men didn't obtain affirmative consent, even if the woman did not object at the time of sex.
Well, here is a case where the perpetrator did not obtain affirmative consent, in that she did not obtain affirmative consent from that other woman that she was having sex with a woman.
I think some similar logic applies.

This woman obtained sex through false pretenses, and the other woman did not actually know what was going on. She did not know that the person having sex with her was a woman, and she did not know that the male organ going into her was, in fact, a sex toy.

 

nope, not even that, one has sex with someone that many times over two years, and consents every time, sorry, that is not rape

 

lets use another example, someone says they are worth 10 billion, and the wife later finds out they lied to them, could they claim rape? as they did not know they were not worth that much, or they would have said no

would about a married man that says he is single?

many examples

 

I would say that does not have to do with the sex act, does not physically have to do with the woman's body (directly).
I totally get what you are saying though. There is a possible spectrum, and a line will have to be drawn somewhere.

Another scenario might be a blind racist white woman who gets tricked into having sex with a black man.

Or a blind woman who has sex but is not aware that the man she's having sex with is not her husband.