A woman who posed as a man to trick a short-sighted teenage girl into kissing her was caught on camera in her disguise. Georgia Bilham has been found guilty of sexual assault by kissing after pretending to be a man called George Parry to start a relationship with the 19-year-old.
A jury found the 21-year-old guilty of one charge but cleared her of all the other alleged offences following three hours of deliberations on Wednesday. Bilham showed no reaction as the verdicts were delivered at Chester Crown Court following an eight-day trial.
The jury was told that Bilham began speaking to her victim after making a Snapchat account under the name of George Parry. They also heard how ‘George’ always wore a hood - even in bed - to trick the young girl.
Bilham said after the first time they met in person the complainant messaged her to say "there's something weird about you" and blocked her on the app. But there continued to be an online "love-hate relationship” before her cover was eventually blown, the Liverpool Echo reports.
Bilham believes this happened after she crashed her mother's car into a hedge while out for a drive with the teenager on May 11, 2021. Jurors convicted her of sexually assaulting the girl by kissing her that same evening.
The defendant told jurors she believes a police officer called to the scene revealed her true identity to the complainant after checking her driving licence. She said: "I think they told her I was female. It was not George, it was Georgia."
The sex offender said that from that point she believes the teenager knew she was really a woman. Giving evidence, the victim's mother said her daughter told her about seeing someone called George, who she said had social anxiety so kept his hood up.
She admitted being caught up in a "web of lies" but denied getting a "buzz" out of deceiving the teenager, maintaining throughout that she thought the woman she had sex with believed she was a woman.
She told the court she had been "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.
Bilham said she never wanted to change gender but questioned her sexuality and that her mother would "not be happy" if she was in a same-sex relationship.
Asked why she set up the fake Snapchat account pretending to be a boy, Bilham 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." Judge Michael Leeming told Bilham: "You have been convicted of count one, an allegation of sexual assault.
"I'm going to adjourn sentencing for a pre-sentence report to be prepared. It should not be taken by you as an indication of a non-custodial sentence - all options are open."
Bilham, of Alpraham, Cheshire, denied nine sexual assaults and eight counts of assault by penetration, all between May to August 2021. She will now have to sign the sex offenders register and will be sentenced on July 19.
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