The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial

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She said she wore a blindfold at all times. She said she didn’t know who she was really having sex with.

 

Two former best friends face each other in court at a sex offence trial. Miss X, making the accusation, claims she was tricked into queer sex, many times, by a best friend pretending to be her boyfriend. But that friend, Gayle Newland, tells a different story. They were secret lesbians, she says, lovers in the closet. The boyfriend was imaginary, and part of a role play that had been going on for years.

 

This astonishing case reached UK courtrooms twice in 2015 and 2017, capturing national attention. At both trials, Newland was convicted of a rare and controversial crime known as ‘rape by deception’. In literature, the plot has been named ‘the bed trick’. Shakespeare made it famous in plays with lovers switching places in the dark, but in real life, a consummated bed trick is rare.

 

As The Bed Trick unfolds the riveting story of Newland’s trials – a case where reality was stranger than fiction – it also reveals the malleability of courtroom narratives, and the many myths, archetypes and stories embedded in the law.

 

‘Izabella Scott picks at every thread of a strange and unsettling case. The result is intriguing, complex and nuanced – and invites the reader to question the certainties of the law and the stories people tell of themselves.'
- Sophie Elmhirst, author of Maurice and Maralyn

‘A juridicial tour de force. Gripping, propulsive and skilfully written, it will deservedly take its place alongside Janet Malcolm and Helen Garner in the pantheon of great court reporting.’
- Orlando Whitfield, author of All That Glitters

‘A fascinating study of recent trials of rape by deception, which are as much about sexual violation as they are about personal identity and the play of false identities... It leaves one in the uncertain and shadowy scenery of deception, longing, sex and love.’
- Susanna Moore, author of In the Cut

‘A huge achievement by a writer of outstanding conscience and courage. On every page, Scott brings together her legal acumen, literary knowledge and her compassion to explore this complex case and set it in the context of our tangled lives.’
- Preti Taneja, author of Aftermath