Woman who ‘posed as man to trick girl into sex’ said it was ‘a stupid mistake’
A woman accused of posing as a man to dupe a teenage girl into having a sexual relationship posted a message saying it was ‘a stupid mistake that shouldn’t have happened’, a court has heard.
Georgia Bilham, 21, is said to have used the alias ‘George Parry’, dressed in men’s clothing keeping a hood up, and removed her alleged victim’s glasses whenever they were together.
The ruse was only uncovered when the 19-year-old complainant’s mother became suspicious and told her she believed ‘George is a girl’, Chester Crown Court has heard.
After she was confronted in August 2021, Bilham told her in a message read in court: ‘I never meant for it to get this far. I’m so sorry for all of it. It was never me and it shouldn’t have happened.’
She told her alleged victim she hated herself for what she had done and had wanted to end it but ‘didn’t know how’.
Bilham added: ‘I didn’t even dress like a lad, it just took over my life.
‘It was a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake that shouldn’t have happened.’
Giving evidence, the teen’s mother said her daughter had told her about seeing someone called George, who she said had social anxiety so kept his hood up.
She said her daughter seemed ‘really happy’ in the relationship and had a ‘spark in her eye’.
The mother told the court: ‘I asked her if she was doing sexual things with George, and she said yeah.
‘I said, “with his hood up?” and she said “yeah”, and I thought “bit strange”.’
She sobbed as she described working out the true gender of her daughter’s partner, including drawing a spider diagram to collate everything she knew about him.
It included him using an emoji to cover his face on photos posted on Snapchat, a bracelet which was always in his car and a bank card in Bilham’s name which her daughter had found.
She told jurors: ‘I was just like, “oh my God, oh my God, it’s a girl, George is Georgia”, and I felt completely sick.’
The mum was asked by the judge if she wanted a break after sobbing in the witness box but continued with her evidence, telling the court she spoke to her daughter the following day.
She said her daughter told her ‘George’ could not be a woman because she ‘felt something in his pants’.
But she said the alleged victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, then spoke to someone else and discovered the person she had been seeing was Bilham.
Asked how it affected her, she said: ‘She felt sick, she wouldn’t eat, she wouldn’t sleep, she was in my bed. She was in crisis.’
The mother said ‘George’ had stayed at their house on about four occasions and she knew when he had stayed because the toilet seat was left up.
She said that on the last occasion she met ‘George’ when he brought her a hot chocolate, wearing his hood up, and he was shaking as he put the drink down.
The mum said she later went into her daughter’s bedroom and the pair were sat in the room in ‘pitch black’ with the blinds closed.
She saw him for the last time when he went out to move his car, she told the court.
‘I was watching because I had this weird feeling in my tummy so I was watching to see how George would react with me,’ she said.
‘As soon as he saw me looking he pulled his hood over his face and put his head to the side.’
Bilham, of Alpraham, Cheshire, denies nine sexual assaults and eight counts of assault by penetration.
Her trial continues.
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