Woman who ‘posed as man to prey on girl’ guilty of one sex offence and cleared of 16

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A woman accused of posing as a man to prey on a short-sighted teenage girl has been found guilty of sexual assault by kissing and cleared of 16 other sex offences.

Georgia Bilham, 21, was cleared by a jury of all but one of the alleged offences after about three hours of deliberations following an eight-day trial.

She made no reaction as the verdicts were delivered at Chester Crown Court on Wednesday.

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 Bunbury Road, Alpraham, Cheshire, had denied nine sexual assaults and eight counts of assault by penetration all between May to August 2021. She will have to sign the sex offenders register and will be sentenced on 19 July.

Her trial was told she created an online Snapchat persona in the name of George Parry to trick the 19-year-old complainant into thinking she was a man.

“George” always wore a hood over his head, even in bed, while with the teenager, who, the court was told, is severely short-sighted.

“George” claimed to be “paranoid” because of his involvement with Albanian gangsters.

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 Snapchat.

But there continued to be an online “love-hate relationship”, which became “toxic” at times, the court heard.

Bilham said she believed her cover was blown after crashing her mother’s car into a hedge while out for a drive with the teenager on 11 May 2021.

Jurors convicted her of sexually assaulting the girl by kissing her that evening.

Bilham 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 defendant said from that point she believes the teenager knew she was really a woman.

Giving evidence, the complainant’s mother said her daughter told her about seeing someone called George, who she said had social anxiety so kept his hood up.

Bilham 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.”