CCTV footage caught the disguise worn by a woman who pretended to be a man in order to kiss a teenage girl.
Georgia Bilham, 21, was found guilty on Wednesday (June 14) of sexual assault by kissing a teenage girl while disguised as a man named 'George'. The woman, from Alpraham, Cheshire, will need to sign the sex offenders register and will be sentenced on July 19.
Chester Crown Court heard how she created an online Snapchat persona under the name George Parry which she used to deceive the 19-year-old into believing she was a man. CCTV footage shows Bilham in her disguise while buying what appears to be sweets at a petrol station shop, the Mirror reports.
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While paying over the counter with her phone, she can be seen pulling down her navy blue hoodie while never taking it off. Bilham would keep the hoodie on consistently, even when in bed with the short-sighted teenager.
The court heard how 'George' claimed to be "paranoid" because of his involvement with Albanian gangsters. Bilham said the teen messaged her after their first meeting to say "There's something weird about you" before blocking her on Snapchat.
Despite this, there continued to be an online “love-hate relationship” which became “toxic” at certain periods, the court heard. Bilham said she felt her cover was blown after crashing her mother’s car into a hedge while out for a drive with the teenager on May 11, 2021.
She was covicted of sexually assaulting the girl by kissing her that evening by a jury. Bilham told jurors she believed a police officer called to the scene revealed her true identity to the complainant after checking her driver’s licence.
She said: "I think they told her I was female. It was not George, it was Georgia." After the event, she believed the teenager really knew she was a woman.
Giving evidence the complainant’s mother said her daughter told her about seeing someone called George. She also noted that George had social anxiety so he kept his hood up.
Bilham said she was caught up in a “web of lies”, however she denied getting a “buzz” out of tricking the teenager and maintained that she though the woman she had sex with believed she was a woman. She told the court how she was “a bit of a tomboy” when she was younger and had a difficult relationship with her mother after her parents split when she was a teenager.
She added that she never wanted to change gender but questioned her sexuality and that her mother would “not be happy” is she was in a same-sex relationship. When asked why she set up a fake Snapchat account, Bilhap replied: “I just was not happy in myself. I just... it was just more like an escape. I don't know.
"I was not confident in myself. It was a stupid thing to do. It was a way of not being me."
Bilham, of Bunbury Road, denied nine sexual assaults and eight counts of assault by penetration, all between May to August 2021.
