A "predatory" young woman who posed as a teenage boy to sexually assault girls as young as 13 after grooming them online has been jailed for eight years.
Gemma Watts, 21, traveled across the UK in disguise by train to meet the girls, who believed she was their boyfriend and close to their own age.
She was sentenced at Winchester Crown Court on Friday after pleading guilty to seven sexual assault and grooming charges.
The offenses relate to four girls, including a 13-year-old from Hampshire and two 14-year-olds and a 16-year-old from Surrey, Plymouth and the West Midlands.
But police believe there could be up to 50 victims.
Watts was "adept at both manipulating people and the continuing subterfuge", prosecutor Barnaby Shaw told the court.
One of her teenage victims, in an impact statement read to the court, said her "heart exploded" and her "world stopped" when police revealed Watts' true identity to her.
She said she has self harmed and considered suicide since then and added: "She is in my head."
Watts, from Enfield in north London, tied her hair into a bun and wore a baseball cap, baggy tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie to convince the girls she was 16-year-old "Jake Waton".
Using her own picture on Jake's Snapchat and Instagram accounts, she targeted girls by liking their profiles.
From her mother's home, where she lived, she shared skateboarding videos, used teenage slang and flattered her victims with complimentary messages, calling them "babe" and other pet names.
She would exchange messages with them, including intimate photographs, using WhatsApp, Snapchat or text and speak over the phone before meeting in person.
Watts, once a promising soccer player, was so convincing she even spent time as Jake with some of the girls' parents.
All of her victims believed they were going out with a teenage boy until police revealed she was an adult woman.
Sentencing her, judge Susan Evans QC said: "There was, it seems to me, planning and in some way predatory behavior. Their age, as you plainly knew, made it more likely that they would be sexually naive, enabling you to get away with your deception.
Source: Sky News
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