Woman, 21, tricked teenage girl into sex, court hears

A woman tricked a teenage girl into sex by hiding her long blonde hair under a hood and pretending to be a boy called George, a jury heard today.

Georgia Bilham, 21, from Cheshire, set up a fake Snapchat profile under the name ‘George Parry’ using a cartoon image of a blonde-haired man as her profile picture and began messaging the girl online, it was alleged.

They progressed to meeting up for sexual activity in ‘George’s’ car, and later at her home, where ‘he’ kept up the pretence and tried to dismiss her mounting suspicions that ‘he’ was really female, the court was told.

Each time, ‘George’ would ask her to remove her glasses, meaning she could not see his face properly. 

The court heard the accuser had ‘very poor’ eyesight, with anything more than 5.5in (14cm) from her face being ‘blurred’. The jury heard it meant that when she was without her spectacles, she was ‘essentially blind’.

Georgia Bilham, 21, set up a fake Snapchat profile under the name ‘George Parry’ using a cartoon image of a blonde-haired man as her profile picture and began messaging her online, it was alleged

They progressed to meeting up for sexual activity in ‘George’s’ car, and later at her home, where ‘he’ kept up the pretence and tried to dismiss her mounting suspicions that ‘he’ was really female, the court was told. Pictured, Georgia Bilham 

Initially the defendant would remove her glasses, but as time went on she would take them off herself.

The crown’s case is that the defendant knew the girl was ‘blind without her glasses – and so took them from her’.

While ‘he’ regularly performed sex acts on the accuser, when she tried to lower ‘his’ Calvin Klein boxer shorts ‘he’ began shaking until she stopped, it was alleged.

‘George’ told her he was too afraid to take off his top or even lower the hood because he was involved with an Albanian criminal gang.

He also said he was self-conscious due to a scar from being stabbed, according to the prosecution.

She had begun messaging ‘him’ online four years earlier, but they only started meeting up after her previous relationship ended, she said, and began going out in ‘his’ car.

‘He always had his coat with the hood up, high underneath the neck,’ she said.

Describing the incident when she first overheard the name Georgia when the car was stopped by police, she said she confronted ‘George’ afterwards.

‘I asked ”Yes or no – are you a girl?”

She eventually agreed to trust him, saying: ‘He never let me touch him – I thought I’d let him go at his own pace.’

She would let George put ‘his’ hand up inside her top and feel her breasts, she said.

She described ‘George’ as ‘tiny’ with tanned skin and with ‘sort of hair’ above his lips.

Even in hot weather, she said ‘he’ kept all his clothes on when they were together.

‘I said ”You’re literally sweating”,’ she said.

But when her mother told her ‘George is a girl’, she said she ‘burst into tears’.

She told the detective Bilham needed ‘serious help’.

Asked if she would have let herself be touched had she known that ‘George was Georgia’, she answered: ‘No, it makes me feel sick.’

‘I’m not gay,’ she added.

However the accuser – who cannot be named for legal reasons – finally learnt the truth after researching Bilham online and confronted ‘George’.

In a message, she wrote: ‘Just admit you’ve been caught out, I know more than enough now.’

Bilham allegedly deleted the Snapchat account under George’s name before writing back: ‘I don’t even dress like a lad, it just took over my life.’

After that, the girl contacted police and Bilham was arrested.

Opening her trial at Chester Crown Court, Anna Pope, prosecuting, said the accuser was not fully consenting to sexual activity because she believed ‘George’ was really male.

Whether Bilham was ‘attracted’ to the alleged victim ‘or whether she gained some form of buzz from duping another woman into believing she was communicating both verbally and physically with a man, is not known,’ she added.

But she said the ‘real issue’ was whether the complainant ‘believed when she was engaging in sexual activity that she was doing so with a man’.

Bilham began messaging her with the Snapchat profile George_132X, the court heard today 

Bilham is charged with nine counts of sexual assault and eight counts of penetration, all of which she denies

The crown’s case is that the defendant knew the girl was ‘blind without her glasses – and so took them from her’. Pictured: Georgia Bilham

Bilham is charged with nine counts of sexual assault and eight counts of penetration, all of which she denies.

Bilham, who arrived at court dressed in a loose-fitting cardigan over a black strappy top, tight black trousers and trainers and with her long blonde hair down, began messaging her with the Snapchat profile George_132X, the court heard today.

‘George’ told her his parents were dead and that he was from Birmingham but was living near Chester and working for Albanian gangsters, Ms Pope said.

In 2021 they began meeting up on local railway tracks where Bilham would be ‘wearing boys’ clothes’, Ms Pope said.

‘He had a hood pulled up over his head.’

She added that this ‘was to be a feature of all of their meetings’, with ‘George’ keeping ‘his’ hood up so the girl could not see ‘the true length of Georgia’s hair’.

The girl began to feel ‘an attraction’ to ‘George’, who she believed was a young man, Ms Pope said, and ‘he’ would pick her up in ‘his’ car and take her for a drive.

In addition, the court heard ‘George’ spoke like a man in a Birmingham accent – and  jurors were told they would be played a voice note that Bilham had sent her via Snapchat in the guise of his ‘alter ego’ of George.

They first kissed on May 10, 2021, but later that evening the car became stuck and ‘George’ started to ‘panic’ when police arrived at the scene and suggested they make a run for it, Ms Pope said.

‘We say that Georgia Bilham was right to be concerned that her true identity would be revealed, because that night, it very nearly was,’ she said.

Officers took the defendant to their patrol car to check ‘his’ details, and the girl overheard them using the name ‘Georgia’.

Afterwards she ‘confronted’ the defendant and ‘demanded an explanation’, the prosecuting barrister said, asking: ‘Are you a girl?’

She said ‘George’ denied it, telling her: ‘It’s a fake licence, ‘cos I don’t have one, that’s why I told you to run.’

She gave ‘him’ until the next morning to prove to her that he was not female, but ‘George’ was unable to do so.

However ‘he’ sent her a ‘selfie’ showing a ‘young man with blonde hair and no top on,’ Ms Pope said.

Later ‘George’ sent her a message, saying: ‘On my way back to Brum with Slitta, he picked up kilos and decided to get in a police chase.’

Ms Pope told jurors this was ‘keeping up the pretence of being George from Birmingham with criminal associates’.

The defendant also told her the reason ‘he’ always had his hood up ‘was linked to his involvement with the Albanian gang members’, and was ‘paranoid about being followed’.

Georgia Bilham leaving Chester Crown Court after being accused of sexual assault on another woman

Jurors were told that Bilham’s defence is likely to be that while sexual activity did take place as alleged, the issue for them to decide was whether the girl knew ‘George’ was really female

‘We say that, despite her initial concerns, she trusted him, and believed that what he was telling her about his identity was true,’ Ms Pope said.

On a later car trip they went to the Horseshoe Pass, a beauty spot in North Wales, where after pulling over she allowed ‘George’ to carry out sex acts on her, jurors were told.

‘She was able to see that George was wearing Calvin Klein boxer shorts,’ Ms Pope said.

She ‘tried to remove his lower clothing so that she too could sexually touch him’, but as she pulled them ‘to just by the hip area’, George ‘stopped’, lay on top of her ‘and started to shake’.

Thinking he was ‘nervous’ and may have been sexually abused when ‘he’ was younger, she ‘did not push it’.

The prosecution case is that if she had ‘had lowered his tracksuit bottoms and boxer shorts, she would have found out that George Parry was in fact Georgia Bilham,’ Ms Pope told jurors.

Over the next few weeks, their intimacy progressed, the court heard, but to the girl’s ‘frustration’, the defendant would not let her perform sex acts on ‘him’.

Ms Pope said: ‘George often gave excuses, such as, for example, that he had been stabbed, and because of the scar, he felt self-conscious and didn’t like to be touched.’

He began staying over at her family home but continued to wear tracksuit bottoms and a top with the hood up, she said.

He was ‘not as relaxed’ as when they were in the car due to the ‘much greater risk’ that someone would realise ‘he’ was not who ‘he’ claimed to be, she added.

However her mother became suspicious after meeting ‘George’ and told her she was being deceived.

On one occasion, after ‘George’ stopped to buy petrol and went to pay, the girl – who had stayed in the car – found a bank card in the name of Georgia Bilham, jurors were told.

But instead of suspecting that ‘George was in fact Georgia’, she instead ‘confronted him’ in the belief that ‘he’ was seeing someone called Georgia Bilham, Ms Pope said.

‘George’ told her he had borrowed Georgia Bilham’s bank card to pay his road tax, the court heard.

The girl even looked up Georgia Bilham’s Facebook profile – on which she showed her true identity – but continued to question whether ‘George’ was in a relationship with her, the prosecutor said.

Ms Pope said this showed it was ‘very clear’ that at that stage she believed that ‘George’ and Bilham ‘were two separate people’.

In August 2021 ‘George’ stayed at her home and woke her up in the night wanting her to ‘sit on his face’, she said – still keeping his hooded top on.

She consented, Ms Pope said – ‘believing, as she had throughout every sexual act, that the person who was performing oral sex on her was a man called George from Birmingham, not a woman called Georgia from Chester’.

But when they went to a local Starbucks the following day, the girl messaged her mother – who had not yet ‘properly’ met ‘George’ – to ask if she wanted them to get her a drink.

She said she did, and on their return the girl told ‘George’ he should give it to her mother ‘himself’ as they hadn’t spoken before beyond ‘Hello’, Ms Pope said.

After protesting, ‘he’ eventually agreed – his hand ‘shaking – so much so that she spilt some of the drink as she was putting it on the table’.

Able to see ‘George’ more clearly than her daughter, she was able to perceive the truth, Ms Pope said.

Not only did she not believe that ‘George’ was the person in the photographs her daughter had been sent, but she ‘did not accept that ‘George’ was a man at all,’ she added.

After telling her daughter of her suspicions, the girl examined Georgia Bilham’s Facebook page.

As she asked more questions, she ‘began to realise that the persona of George Parry was entirely fake, created by the real George, Georgia Bilham’.

Ms Pope said the accuser was ‘clear that she did not consent to have sexual activity with a woman’.

‘When she agreed to have sexual activity with George Parry, it was on the basis that George Parry was a male,’ she added.

As a result, she finally confronted ‘George’ on August 19 before contacting Bilham’s father and forwarding the messages ‘he’ had sent her.

Interviewed by police, Bilham answered ‘no comment’ to each question.

Jurors were told that Bilham’s defence is likely to be that while sexual activity did take place as alleged, the issue for them to decide was whether the girl knew ‘George’ was really female.

Later jurors were played the alleged victim’s police interview during which she told detectives it was ‘sick’ that Bilham posed as George, adding that she needed ‘serious help’.

The trial continues.