(SF) – Jake Waton won over teenage girls on social media, swapping flirty messages and intimate pictures with them online before meeting them in person. For many of them, the 16-year-old was the first boy they dated. But Jake Waton was actually Gemma Watts – an adult woman. The British 21-year-old posed as a teen boy to groom and sexually assault girls as young as 13, wearing baggy clothing and tucking her long hair under a hat to fool her targets and, in some cases, even their parents.

On Friday, London’s Metropolitan Police announced that Watts had been sentenced to eight years behind bars for incidents involving four girls. She pleaded guilty to seven sexual assault and grooming charges in a crime that Judge Susan Evans said caused “severe psychological harm” to victims. “Their age, as you plainly knew, made it more likely that they would be sexually naive, enabling you to get away with your deception,” Evans said during sentencing, according to the Independent. READ MORE


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