A shortsighted woman said she was “shocked and disgusted” to find out that the boy she’d been dating as a teenager turned out to be a girl in disguise.
Georgia Bilham, 21, is accused of posing online as a boy named George Parry during an on-off relationship with a girl she met on Snapchat in 2017. A jury at Chester crown court has heard that Bilham, from Cheshire, wore a hood while meeting her shortsighted victim, claiming to be “paranoid” because of an involvement with Albanian gang members.
The 20-year-old complainant, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been texting Bilham for a number of years, since she was 14 or 15, and eventually met up in “George’s” car, and in the alleged victim’s home, and engaged in sexual activity.
The court has heard that when the pair met, “George” would ask the complainant to remove her glasses. The accuser had “very poor” eyesight, the jury heard, with anything more than 14cm (5.5in) from her face being “blurred”. The jury heard it meant that when she was without her spectacles, she was “essentially blind”.
In a pre-recorded cross-examination by the defence lawyer, Martine Snowdon, the alleged victim said: “I was shocked and disgusted I was so close to this person who turned out to be someone else, and that ‘George’ wasn’t real.
“I felt sick with shock that the person I thought was George was actually Georgia.”
The defendant denies nine counts of sexual assault and eight counts of assault by penetration. The alleged victim insisted she was unaware that Georgia had been posing as male.
She said that the first time she had even questioned that George was a girl was following a car crash that the pair were involved in during May 2021. This was the same night that they shared their first kiss, which was their first act of physical intimacy.
She allegedly overheard police at the crash refer to “George” as “Georgia”, and she began to question George’s real gender and identity.
The complainant also saw a driving licence under the name of Georgia Bilham inside the car on a separate occasion and questioned why that was there.
Text message correspondence between the complainant and defendant shows the defendant as “George” claiming that he needed a fake licence because he doesn’t have a legitimate one, and didn’t have car insurance.
She said she believed she had felt a penis through clothing on two occasions when they were together.
Snowdon said: “Georgia Bilham denies that there was ever anything intended to mimic a penis in her clothing at any stage and either you’re not telling the truth about that or you’re mistaken.”
The woman said: “I disagree because I honestly thought that it was and that George was doing it so I’d know that it was there, but he’s just so nervous I didn’t want to push him.”
She said “George” carried out sex acts on her but did not let her touch him, and they never had penetrative sex.
Bilham insists the complainant knew she was really female. The jury heard that in a message to a friend, the complainant said: “I’m in a situation-ship with someone I don’t even know is a girl or a boy.”
Other messages sent between the two women were read out in court, including one where the complainant was asking “George” to be “honest” about “who he is”, and that she knows that he’s “hiding something”.
Under cross-examination, the complainant said her scepticism was because of what she was told about “George’s” involvement in crime and Albanian gangs, adding: “It wasn’t about the gender of George, but something wasn’t adding up.”
The trial continues.
