She’s certainly not your average sex offender.
Posing in a bikini on holiday in Spain with her long blonde hair and tanned skin, or glamorous in sophisticated cocktail bars, 21-year-old Georgia Bilham is clearly used to the attention her looks attract.
But as a teenager with a lack of self-confidence and doubts about her sexuality, the garage owner’s daughter created a male alter ego that would land her a long prison sentence years later.
Although Bilham was acquitted yesterday of 16 of the 17 crimes she was charged with, she nevertheless risks being placed on the sex offenders register.
It’s all a far cry from her upbringing in a peaceful Cheshire backwater known for its canal and unusual ‘trap’ locks.
Georgia Bilham, 21, poses in a bikini on holiday in Spain with her long blonde hair and tanned skin and is clearly used to the attention her appearance attracts
But as a teenager with a lack of self-confidence and doubts about her sexuality, the garage owner’s daughter created a male alter ego known as George.
Bilham attended the high-performing Tarporley High School – motto ‘Aspire, learn, reach’ – less than three miles from her parents’ £400,000 detached house next to the Shropshire Union Canal.
Friends remember her as a “tomboy” in her teens, known to her mother by the androgynous nickname “George” – perhaps a nod to Enid Blyton’s Famous Five character, whose real name was Georgina – and to them simply “G”.
Though her hair was always long, she preferred shapeless tracksuits to dressing up.
After leaving school, she worked as a housekeeper at the 16th-century Swan Hotel in posh Tarporley, arriving at 6 a.m. to prepare the guests’ rooms.
“She was very girly in some ways,” a former colleague recalled today.
“Georgia always had her eyelashes and nails done, but she also liked to wear loose tracksuits.
“She was a bit of a tomboy even then, but I can’t understand how anyone could mistake her for a man, she’s so beautiful.
‘She was very quiet, she didn’t seem to have many friends and just went about her work.
“Georgia worked on the doorstep for a while, but she didn’t seem to have the confidence for it.
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard what she was accused of. It didn’t sound like the Georgia I knew.”
While still in school, Bilham secretly copied photos of a fellow student with blonde, spiky hair to create the fake Snapchat profile George_132X – which would evolve into George Parry.
Potentially significant was that her relationship with her father, Peter Bilham, was already much closer than that with her mother, Michelle Fisher.
She is the couple’s only child – although Ms Fisher, now 57, has a son from a previous relationship.
Georgia told the jury that she and her mother were “always arguing” since she “started growing up.”
Bilham sat smiling outside Chester Crown Court awaiting the jury’s verdict yesterday
Bilham attended the high-performing Tarporley High School – motto ‘Aspire, learn, reach’ – less than three miles from her parents’ £400,000 detached house next to the Shropshire Union Canal
Her parents separated when she was about 12 – Bilham told the jury that her mother was ‘the reason’ for the split – and she initially lived with her.
Contrary to how she and her father were always “dead close,” her relationship with her mother has remained “bad,” she said.
The feeling is clearly mutual: customers of Mr Bilham’s established village garage are told that outside work he enjoys ‘walking the dog and spending time with my daughter’.
And so it was the long-suffering Mr. Bilham who was called to save Georgia when she crashed her car while disguised as George Parry, accompanied by ‘his’ unwitting girlfriend.
At court, the bespectacled, grey-haired 60-year-old was also a constant presence when the extraordinary details of his daughter’s deception were revealed – her mother was nowhere to be seen.
Bilham was still in school when she first experimented with turning the online character of Birmingham’s George Parry into a real person.
Her explanation for constructing her alter ego was that “I just didn’t like myself,” so “it just made me feel better.”
As to why the persona was that of a boy, she said it was “more of an escape,” denying she was sexually attracted to girls or wanting to turn into a man.
“George” said he was associated with drug-dealing Albanians — something Bilham suggested was really part of her life at the time.
After exchanging messages with the teen who would later be convicted of sexual assault, the pair – whose wider friendship groups overlapped – met up near Chester one night in 2017 and chatted.
The evening was cold, so ‘George’ – holding up his hood in what would later become a pattern – gave the younger girl ‘his’ Hugo Boss sweater and she took it home.
However, Bilham claimed that the girl then blocked her on social media, telling ‘George’ that there was ‘something strange’ about ‘him’.
While still in school, Bilham secretly copied photos of a fellow student with blonde, spiky hair to create the fake Snapchat profile George_132X – which would evolve into George Parry
Messages later resumed, but they didn’t see each other for about four years, and both had boyfriends in the meantime.
Bilham described their online interaction as a “love-hate relationship” – but said they knew each other “inside through” by now, so it was “hard to walk away from.”
But it was obtaining her driver’s license at age 19 – and access to her mother’s Ford Focus – that enabled her to take George Parry to another level of deceit.
Under the guise of George, Bilham would pick up the teenager – about a year younger than her – and drive it around for hours.
Around the second meeting, on the night of May 10, 2021, they kissed for the first time – but in the early hours of the next morning, Bilham lost control of the car and drove into a hedge.
This was a crucial part of the case against her – the police came by and she had to give her real name, although the victim claimed she only heard “Georgia Helen,” which is her middle name.
Bilham and the car were picked up by her father, while the police gave the girl a ride home.
Central to Bilham’s defense was her claim that the girl must have known her true gender afterwards and consciously agreed to a “fiction.”
PC David Fallows gave evidence to Bilham’s trial, saying the alleged victim had told him she knew the driver as ‘George’ and that they had been messaging online.
The officer confirmed that he had told her that the person she knew as “George” was actually a woman.
They drove her home, with the officer describing her as “upset,” “crying,” and “bent over in a fetal position.”
While Bilham was acquitted yesterday of 16 of the 17 crimes she was charged with, she nevertheless risks being placed on the sex offender register
During cross-examination, Bilham’s lawyer, Martine Snowdon, asked, “As for you, did you make sure she knew George was a woman?”
“Yes,” PC Fallows replied.
But the prosecution said a manipulated screenshot Bilham sent the teen suggesting that “George’s ‘Albanian associates’ had mistakenly given him a fake female ID was enough to allay her suspicions.”
Bilham also insisted that her elaborate lies were to hide her true identity – not to try to lure the girl into having sex.
She said she kept up appearances to avoid “finding out it was me,” as friends and family knew nothing about the relationship.
However, she struggled to explain why, if that’s the case, she didn’t attempt the simpler task of creating a female alter ego.
After the crash, they continued to see each other every few days, walking Bilham’s dog or visiting beauty parlors – all with her hood up all over, she admitted, and often, it was alleged, with the nearsighted victim’s glasses off.
Bilham’s explanation was that she could be “heavy-handed” as they kissed and was afraid of breaking them.
After driving to Horseshoe Pass near Llangollen, the victim tried to get to the next step and pull down ‘George’s’ trousers, after which he ‘started shaking’.
Bilham admitted that the incident happened, but insisted that the Calvin Klein underwear she was wearing was girls’ underpants, not boys’ boxers.
They spent the night at the girl’s childhood home, with “George” remaining fully clothed with his hood up, even while performing sexual acts on her.
The victim claimed she felt a “willy-like figure” against her leg – but Bilham denied that a message to her mother about “boxers and socks” was an admission of using objects to mimic a penis.
She testified in her defense on Monday and stood by her demand that the teen saw through her disguise shortly after their first kiss.
“I think she knew I was a girl,” she said.
Bilham faced eight counts of assault by penetration – an offense that carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.
The offense of assault for which she was convicted carries a 10-year prison sentence, but courts can order community service in the least serious cases.
