Scandal rocks private prison as 18 female guards FIRED for hooking up with inmates
WREXHAM, WALES: Eighteen female guards at Britain’s biggest prison, HMP Berwyn, have been fired for having sexual relationships with inmates. The forbidden relationships that took place over the past six years at the Wrexham jail in North Wales were discovered in Freedom of Information requests after three of the women ended up behind the bars for the flings.
Mark Fairhurst, chair of the Prison Officers' Association, blamed the hiring of "the wrong kind of women" for the relationships. "Staff being recruited don't have face-to-face interviews… it's all done on Zoom. A lot of people getting these jobs don't have enough life experience and are susceptible to conditioning from prisoners. Your figures just prove what we've been warning the employer about for years," he told Mirror. The guards caught guilty of initiating relationships with prisoners at the $302 million super prison which shelters Category C adult male offenders include Jennifer Gavan, 27, Ayshea Gunn, 27, and Emily Watson, 26.
READ MORE
Jail nurse and prison officer accused of having 'inappropriate relationships' with SAME inmate
Vicky White: Jail guard who escaped with Casey White was in a two-year relationship with him
Three prison officers were found guilty
Following her relations with prisoner Alex Coxon, 25, Gavan pleaded guilty to misconduct and was jailed for eight months in December. She accepted £150 at Mold Crown Court for smuggling a phone into Coxon’s cell and exchanging intimate photos with each other on Whatsapp. Only a year before, fellow officer Ayshea Gunn, 27, had a fling with "dangerous" inmate Khuram Razaq, 29. The probation officer reportedly had sexual relations with armed robber Razaq and swapped “highly sexualized” photos and videos. She was jailed for one year at Mold Crown Court in 2019.
Colleague Emily Watson, 26, was sent behind the bars for one year in April 2019 at the same court for performing a sex act on an inmate in his cell. An investigation was launched after Watson and drug dealer John McGee were seen spending a lot of time together. The court heard that the female officer was alone with the prisoner on three occasions when she performed a sex act on him twice and had intercourse once.
'Prison Service staff are hardworking and honest'
The prison with a capacity of 2,100 will now conduct compulsory new training for staff in order to tackle such issues. A Prison Service spokesperson for the Ministry of Justice spoke about the staff at the "UK's cushiest jail," as per the DailyMail. "The vast majority of Prison Service staff are hardworking and honest but we are doing more than ever to catch the small number who break the rules," he said.
