The Bed Trick: Sex and Deception on Trial

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.

About the Author :
Izabella Scott is a writer from London. She has been published by the London Review of Books, the Financial Times, Granta, The New Enquiry and others. She is the co-author, with Skye Arundhati Thomas, of Pleasure Gardens, which was joint winner of the 2025 Bread & Roses Award for Radical Publishing. She was formerly co-editor of The White Review.

Review :
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 A juridical 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. I could not bear to put it down and was bereft when I had finished it A fascinating study of recent English trials of rape by deception, which are as much about sexual violation as they are about personal identity and the play of false identities. The irony is that as revelatory as the facts appear to be - charges brought by a woman who believed that her female lover was a man - it is what may be made of the facts that compels the reader. Despite the harsh answer given by the court, it leaves one in the uncertain and shadowy scenery of deception, longing, sex and love The Bed Trick is 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. She refuses to sensationalise but instead brings her unique clarity to our legal system as it meets our human instincts of desire and deception. A rare accomplishment