Mother sobs as she tells court how she discovered her daughter's 'male' partner was really a woman

The mother of a teenager who was allegedly sexually assaulted by a woman posing as a man has sobbed in court as she described working out the true gender of her daughter’s partner.

Georgia Bilham, 21, is charged with 17 sexual offences after allegedly deceiving a 19-year-old woman by pretending to be a man.

Chester Crown Court heard Bilham posed online as George Parry, a man from Birmingham, and wore a hood while meeting her visually impaired victim.

Bilham claimed she needed to hide herself as she was “paranoid” because of an involvement with Albanian gang members.

But the the complainant’s mother became suspicious.

She said after meeting “George” she had a “really awful feeling” in her stomach and drew 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.

Giving evidence at the trial she said: “I was just like ‘oh my God, oh my God, it’s a girl, George is Georgia’ and I felt completely sick.”

She was asked by the judge Michael Leeming 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 jury heard that “George” had stayed at their house on about four occasions and that the girl's mother 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.

She said she later went into her daughter’s bedroom and the pair were sitting in the room in “pitch black” with the blinds closed.

She told the jury that she saw him for the last time when he went out to move his car.

“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.”

The woman said her daughter told her “George” kept his hood up because of social anxiety.

She added: “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’.”

In a message sent after she had been confronted about her real identity, Bilham told the complainant she hated herself for what she had done and had wanted to end it but “didn’t know how”.

She added: “I don’t even dress like a lad, it just took over my life.

“It was (a) stupid, stupid, stupid mistake that shouldn’t have happened.”

Bilham, of Bunbury Road, Alpraham, Cheshire, denies nine sexual assaults and eight counts of assault by penetration.

The trial continues.