14 June 2023 , 22:03
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CCTV footage released today shows the disguise a woman used to pretend she was a man, tricking a short-sighted teenager she had first met online.
Georgia Bilham, 21, was today found guilty of sexual assault by kissing a teenage girl while posing as a man named 'George'.
The woman, from Alpraham, Cheshire, will have to sign the sex offenders register and will be sentenced on July 19.
A trial at Chester Crown Court heard 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.
Newly-released CCTV shows Bilham dressed up in her disguise buying what appears to be sweets in a petrol station shop.
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She appeared to buy sweets at the shop (Cheshire Police)As she pays over the counter with her phone, she can be seen pushing her navy blue hoodie down and never removing it from her head in order to appear like a boy.
'George' always wore a hood over his head, even in bed with the teenager, who, the court was told, is severely short-sighted - and he claimed to be "paranoid" because of his involvement with Albanian gangsters.
Bilham said after the first time she met the complainant in person, the teen then 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.
Georgia Bilham keeping her hoodie down at a petrol station (Cheshire Police)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 May 11, 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."
Jurors convicted her of sexually assaulting the girl by kissing her that evening (Andrew Price / View Finder Pictures)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.
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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.
Georgia Bilham at Chester Crown Court (PA)
Bilham was found guilty of sexual assault by kissing (PA)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."
Bilham, of Bunbury Road, denied nine sexual assaults and eight counts of assault by penetration, all between May to August 2021.