A woman has been sentenced to 10 and a half years in jail for sexual assault after pretending to be a man to dupe a woman into sex using a blindfold, a sex toy and a “wholly fake persona”.
Blade Silvano, 41, met the victim on the online dating site Plenty of Fish in November 2016 and they got engaged as man and woman, Cambridge crown court heard.
She was found guilty in May of two counts of assault by penetration, and was sentenced on Wednesday for what the judge said was not a case of “gender dysphoria” or “anyone’s sexuality”, but about “deception, skilfully carried out and maliciously maintained”.
Using a fake name, Blade Mendez, Silvano presented herself as a man throughout a two-year relationship with the victim, who was a mother of small children. She would send the victim photos of herself shaving her face and would pretend to urinate standing up. She also lied about having cancer treatment and being trampled by cows when she in fact was on holiday, the court was told.
When she and the complainant were intimate, in December 2016 and February 2017, Silvano refused to be seen naked, wearing a long sleeved top and pulling her jeans down only slightly, before turning away to pretend to roll on a condom, Mr Justice Philip Grey said on Wednesday.
She would not allow the victim to touch her genitals, claiming to be “body conscious due to injuries sustained in the army”, the prosecutor, Julie Whitby, told Cambridge crown court.
The judge said Silvano used “either a strap-on penis or double-ended dildo” to penetrate the woman, who went to the police after uncovering Silvano’s deception after finding her on Facebook in September 2018 “in a completely different living situation”.
Another partner of Silvano’s later told the woman “You are not the first and won’t be the last”, the court heard.
Silvano also lied about being a vet, about having a PhD and about being a British army veteran, the court heard.
The woman said that her family did not believe that Silvano had cancer, but she stood by “him”, only to realise her family were right all along.
A victim impact statement was read to the jury by the woman, who said: “The relationship with Blade was a loving, caring and nurturing one, where there were dreams and aspirations for the future, and grand gestures of car giving, house buying, wedding planning and child rearing.
“There had to be upsetting and difficult conversations about having children together on account of Blade receiving chemotherapy for his cancer because of its links to infertility. Blade even suggested adopting my [children] when I was going through the court system with their biological dad.”
She added: “These hopes were dashed when I found Blade accidentally on Facebook in a completely different living situation that he had made me believe. And my whole world then came tumbling down. The person I’d been in love with, and stood by for nearly two years, had lied to me about everything, including the basics of his gender.”
Whitby noted that the victim still refers to Silvano as “he”, despite knowing the truth about her “wholly fake persona”.
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