Eighteen female guards have either been fired or quit in recent years after it was revealed that they allegedly had sex with the male inmates.
Three former HMP Berwyn guards — Jennifer Gavan, 27, Ayshea Gunn, 27, and Emily Watson, 26 — have been imprisoned for their illicit affairs over the last three years.
According to a report from The Mirror, the fifteen other affairs were discovered through a Freedom of Information request over the trio of jailed guards.
“Watson had a sexual relationship with drug dealer John McGee, who was serving eight years for causing death by dangerous driving. And probation officer Gunn hooked up with armed robber Khuram Razaq and exchanged ‘highly sexualised’ photos and videos,” the report explains. She was also found to have performed sex acts on the inmate in his jail cell.
Gunn’s fling was with “dangerous” inmate Khuram Razaq, 29, who is imprisoned for conspiracy to rob. The prison found photos of her kissing and cuddling the inmate in his cell on her phone. She also reportedly smuggled her underwear to him inside of her bra.
According to the report, the encounters are not only happening at HMP Berwyn. The newspaper found that since 2019, there have been 31 female officers dismissed for inappropriate relationships at prisons across England and Wales. One guard even had an inmate’s baby.
Mark Fairhurst, chair of the Prison Officers’ Association, told The Mirror that the sexual encounters were due to “the wrong kind of women” being hired.
“Staff being recruited don’t have face-to-face interviews… it’s all done on Zoom,” Fairhurst said. “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 added.
A Prison Service spokesman told Yahoo News, “the overwhelming majority of Prison Service staff are hardworking and dedicated and we will not hesitate to punish those who break the rules.”
“Over 500 members of staff at HMP Berwyn have undertaken corruption prevention training in the last 18 months and our enhanced security is protecting the prison against attempts to smuggle illicit items inside,” the spokesman added.
