GEMMA BARKER
GEMMA Barker didn’t just pretend to be a boy – she pretended to be TWO boys.
What’s more, her disguise was so convincing, she even fooled FRIENDS into having sex with her.
Two teenage girls, aged 15 and 16, believed they had found the perfect boyfriends in Connor McCormack and Aaron Lampard – who they believed were their age.
But their worlds collapsed when they realised that Connor and Aaron were not only the same person, but were in fact their friend Gemma Barker.
Guildford Crown Court heard how Barker, 20, duped the girls, their parents and police by wearing baggy clothes, hats and speaking in a deeper voice.
Even when one of her alter egos was arrested, it wasn’t until officers gave her a male strip search that they realised ‘ he’ was in fact a ‘ she’.
Alter- egos
‘ Aaron’ and ‘ Connor’ were born in 2009 according to fake Facebook profiles which Barker created to lure her teenage friends on dates.
She showed up on dates wearing loose- fitting clothes and hats to hide her true identity.
Barker, dressed as Aaron, even accompanied one of the girls to her family home and met her parents, who knew Gemma as a girl.
Her alter- egos became so complex that she even concocted elaborate back stories for them, telling one of her victims that Aaron had lost his mother in a car accident and his two brothers died, one from, leukaemia and the other in a drowning incident.
Judge Peter Moss said Barker had played with their minds and physically with their bodies, describing what she did as “sucking on their emotions”.
Her cover was only blown when one of the girls removed ‘ Aaron’s’ hat while asleep and realised he and Connor, whom her friend was dating, were the same person. Even then she didn’t recognise he was also her friend Gemma.
After ‘ Aaron’s’ supposed infidelity, the girls discussed the situation and contacted police.
When the net was closing in, Barker deliberately fractured her jaw and tried to blame another alter- ego, ‘ Luke Jones’, for attacking her and forcing her to pose as ‘ Aaron’.
“On June 9, 2010, the officers arrested who they thought was Aaron Lampard,’ said prosecutor Ruby Selva.
“He was patted down and searched by officers and taken into custody as a male but it was only as clothes were taken in the custody suite that it became apparent that it was a female – and this defendant.”
Barker, of Staines, Middlesex, was jailed for two- and- a- half years.