HOLES cut in uniforms for illegal liaisons, blackmail ‘sext’ plots and pornography ‘sticks’ smuggled through the gates – this is the sordid underbelly of prison life in modern Britain.
The shocking sex tape of officer Linda De Sousa Abreu, who received a 15-month jail sentence this week, has appalled the public and those who work in the prison service.
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The Venezuela native, 30, a married swinger with an account on OnlyFans, claimed to have been “terrified for her own safety” when she was filmed in June last year. But her lies have since been debunked.
The same day as the now-infamous video was recorded, she was also captured performing a sex act with the same inmate, Linton Weirich, on her bodycam.
She romped with the burglar, held in Wandsworth Prison for stealing £65,000 worth of valuables, at least once before and even arranged for an officer “to be present to keep watch”.
The judge said De Sousa Abreu “participated with evident enthusiasm” in the viral video, which was nearly five minutes long and had “caused great harm” to the prison service.
Shockingly, in recent years stories like this have become increasingly common, with record numbers of female prison officers fired for having sex with male inmates.
In the last three years alone, 29 were sacked, compared to just nine between 2017 and 2019, while 50 more, from 124 investigations, were suspended or moved to a new role instead.
Grooming for sex appears so commonplace that gangs are exploiting it too, with one Albanian con brazenly boasting on TikTok that he “f***ed female prison officers for £2,000”.
Now, former prison workers and inmates tell The Sun why cases have skyrocketed, blaming rushed hirings of inexperienced young women easily preyed upon by manipulative career criminals.
They tell us how staff as young as 18 are often brought in following insufficient background checks, only to find they are quickly blackmailed by inmates desperate for sex.
Reformed criminal Stuart Reid, author of 10 Years A Cat A, warns part of the problem is that “prisoners are master manipulators” and it’s a skill they can never unlearn.
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He tells The Sun: “They have a trait to coerce people into doing things. That won’t stop in prison. They look for weak links in the staff, for someone to do their bidding.
“You could something small but it then leads to smuggling in a phone, bringing in drugs or even giving them sex.”
Former senior prison officer Sally, not her real name, attests to this, saying crooks constantly look for ways to exploit guards.
“All it takes is just that one thing, one favour, then you’re stuck and you’re trapped forever,” she tells us.
She was never charged, but she was investigated and was told, ‘Resign and you can walk away, or you will be arrested’
Unnamed prison officer
Becoming compromised is deceptively simple. Even if an officer accepts a game of pool where the winner gets a Mars bar, they would be judged to have broken the rules by gifting a prisoner – and from there they could be blackmailed.
Sally tells us: “They used to say to me, ‘Oh miss, save us twos on your cig?’ but I knew their plan. It starts with that, then it’s ‘Get us a bottle of vodka’, then ‘Bring stuff in’ and then they want the keys.
“I’d tell them, ‘You’re not going to get it from me’, stamp my cigarette out on the floor. It was my way to tell them I’d never, ever cross that line. Essentially I was saying ‘Get lost’ but they respect you for it.
‘Never just sex’
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Ruth Shmylo, who was cleared of misconduct in public office in 2023, is among the prison officers who says she was exploited and forced into sexual situations.
She claimed to have been forced to have phone sex with an inmate, who passed her his number in prison and then threatened to hurt her family if she didn’t comply.
Shmylo told the court that she feared repercussions if she reported him and felt engaging in conversations, which she described as “sexual harassment”, was a way of “trying to damage control the situation”.
However, motivations can vary from case to case, and despite constant surveillance behind bars it’s not hard for determined prison officers to find places to get frisky with lags.
The Sun was told some officers even cut holes in their uniforms to make it easier to get up to no good and to arouse less suspicion in more public places.
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An anonymous HMP worker told MailOnline there are “actually lots of places they could potentially have sex” away from prying eyes – including cupboards, medical rooms and even cells if they’re “happy to live dangerously”.
They explained that officers could plausibly come up with an excuse to have a ‘chat’ with an inmate, allowing them to sneak off together for illegal acts.
They recalled one woman was found to have had sex acts performed on her in a methadone room, for recovering heroin addicts, after the prisoner blabbed about an extremely distinctive tattoo just above the lady’s groin.
“She was never charged, but she was investigated and was told, ‘Resign and you can walk away, or you will be arrested,’” the officer, who is currently serving, alleged.
They also claimed the lady had been smuggling drugs for the prisoner, showed “it is never just about sex for these guys”.
‘Sex-mad’ prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu sentenced
SEX tape prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu, 30, has been sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for one count of misconduct in public office.
The crimes of the Venezuelan, of Fulham, southwest London, came to light after an X-rated clip of her with an inmate went viral.
De Sousa Abreu romped with burglar Linton Weirich, who stole £65,000 worth of valuables from a safe, in June last year in the clip.
She was filmed by his cell mate on a phone that would have been smuggled into prison and he seen smoking a spliff,
Sentencing the former prisoner officer, who is a married swinger, Judge Martin Edmunds KC spoke about how her actions will impact the “reputation of the prison service” and their ability to recruit.
He continued: “It causes anxiety among those close to vulnerable prisoners who worry more about the environment in which prisoners are held. That recording is still out there and will doubtless circulate indefinitely.
“You are not responsible for the wider problems of prisons, but you have added to them. The level of harm is high, indeed very high.”
A Prison Service spokesperson said: “While the overwhelming majority of Prison Service staff are hardworking and honest, we’re catching more of the small minority who break the rules by bolstering our Counter Corruption Unit and strengthening our vetting processes.
“As the sentencing demonstrates, where officers do fall below our high standards we won’t hesitate to take robust action.”
Of course, all of these actions are highly dangerous, as was the case with De Sousa Abreu, who during her infamous sex tape had her keys on the table.
Sally explains: “It was a major security risk and the repercussions could have been horrendous.
“They could have locked her in the cell, then because the cell door was open they could use the keys to open all the end landing gates of the wing.
“It could have been terrible. What she did was so dangerous and put so many people – staff, inmates, vulnerable prisoners – at risk.
“During the Strangeways (Manchester Prison) riots in 1990, vulnerable inmates were battered and at least one was killed. I don’t think she realises the risk she caused. It was inexplicably dangerous.”
Booming porn trade
Stuart claims part of the problem is that there is no outlet for men’s sexual needs while in prison – pornography, X-rated images and other blue material are banned.
It’s led to a booming illegal trade of ‘sticks’, which he explains are memory sticks containing around 100 over-18 films and TV shows, 20 porn flicks and other bits like games.
He tells us: “In high security prisons they can sell for £500. They are smuggled in. The prison service are paranoid about them because messages can be sneaked in too.
“Unless you’ve been chemically castrated, if you’re serving 20 or 30 years you are still going to have urges and the imagination can only go so far.”
If you’ve got a bad husband or boyfriend who’s a bit of a s*** or a cheater and some cons starts charming and flattering you, it may be hard to be so disciplined
Stuart Reid
Prisoners are able download content from these ‘sticks’ onto video games consoles, where they can be played. Often this type of content is shared around.
Stuart adds: “One day someone won’t bring in a data stick or have sex with someone, it will be something dangerous that will put high security at stake.”
Sex is also banned but as the scores of cases in recent times prove, that hasn’t stopped crooks from trying.
In fact, Andrew Davy, the governor of Wandsworth Prison, where De Sousa Abreu worked, claimed female staff were “considered fair game” by inmates and noted they were regularly “hit on”.
Prison targets
It’s believed around 40 per cent of public sector prison staff are women and since the 1980s, both men and women have been allowed to work in opposite sex prisons.
It’s suspected the true number of female staff who leave under a cloud is even higher than reported – due to claims some quit without being charged for misconduct, some cases not making it to court and figures only representing public prisons, not private ones run by G4S, Serco and Sodexo.
Stuart says there are a raft of “pretty boy prisoners”, who – due to have nothing to do – spend “all their time bulking up in the gym” to flirt with, tempt and trick officers into sexual liaisons.
He adds: “I feel for women working in prisons, most are under 35, they are getting lots of unwarranted and unwanted attention. It must be difficult to navigate.
“You can imagine how much attention they get from prisoners, some who won’t see the light of day for five, 10, 15 years, maybe even longer.
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“Some, without wanting to sound unkind, wouldn’t normally get that type of attention in the real world but these guys are on a mission to find someone to pass the time away with, so to speak.
“Or if you’ve got a bad husband or boyfriend who’s a bit of a s*** or a cheater and some cons starts charming and flattering you, it may be hard to be so disciplined.
“If he’s telling you ‘You’re a princess’, how great you look and how he could do so much for you when he’s out, some may be tempted. But with that they will often want something else in return too.”
‘Scum of the earth’
That’s often been the case for the scores of female prison officers who have been corrupted by the crooks into not only having sex but smuggling items including drugs in or turning a blind eye too.
De Sousa Abreu, for example, was caught on video ignoring the fact her lover’s fellow inmate had a mobile phone and was smoking a spliff.
Among the most prolific cases, many have occurred at the £212million ‘super prison’ HMP Berwyn in North Wales, where 18 women were sacked for relationships with cons.
They include Emily Watson, who performed a sex act on her locked-up lover in his cell on Christmas Day and Ayshea Gunn, who had 1,200 calls – including racy video calls – with crook Khuram Razaq.
I had been in prison for literally 20 minutes when I was taken to an upstairs office by a prison officer, who asked me for £10,000 and asked what he could do for it
Stuart Reid
She not only smuggled a phone into prison for him but also a pair of her worn-knickers, which were concealed in her bra.
Sally believes the hiring process in the prison service is a big part of the problem – and notes a practice of offering voluntary redundancy packages only to rehire people on lower salaries hasn’t helped.
She says it led to the force losing a lot of experience and due to officers “starting on less money that never really gets up to what older officers are on”, few see it as a long-term career.
Crooks are willing to exploit this. As former governor Vanessa Frake tells us, “the one thing prisoners have is time so they are always listening”, ear-wigging on staff conversations and even hiding behind doors to gain intel.
This makes them more easily exploitable, Sally tells us, adding: “Guards say, ‘Oh I’m skint, I’ve got no money,’ then the prisoners come in all friendly, offering ‘If you do this for me, you can have this’.
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She brands those type of people “scum of the earth” but according to ex crook Stuart, it’s not just the prisoners who are making offers.
He explains: “I had been in prison for literally 20 minutes when I was taken to an upstairs office by a prison officer, who asked me for £10,000 and asked what he could do for it.
“He wanted to buy his daughter a car for university and said he’d been into my file, seen I was a convicted drug dealer and that I’d made ‘lots of money’ in the newspapers.
“He was offering to bring in phones, drugs, anything I wanted. I turned him down. That was 20 years ago but I can imagine things haven’t changed, there are still corrupt prison officers.”
Inexperienced staff
Vanessa told us that “a quarter of staff at Wandsworth were inexperienced”, which she puts down to high turnover in the job, low pay, difficult hours and younger people being hired.
She adds: “You can join at 17 and start by your 18th birthday, which I think is too young, you have no life experience at that point. Imagine trying to tell a hardened criminal of 50-plus years to change their life? I don’t think it works.”
I believe she was doing it for notoriety, it’s disgusting. She’s obviously sex mad and put prisoners and staff at risk
Sally, former prison officer
Sally says: “I joined when I was in my 30s and I thought, ‘What the hell have I done?’ I was scared to death. So 18 is definitely too young, they can’t handle criminals who have been in and out of the system for years.”
The remedy for Vanessa is better and more regular training, more support for staff and thorough vetting, which she believes has fallen by the wayside.
She adds: “The vetting procedures the prison service employs now, since Covid, is nothing like it used to be.
“Many join the prison service online, I don’t think you can judge a person’s character by talking to them there. Face-to-face interviews are far better.”
Another thing Vanessa calls for is for the crooks engaging in sexual liaisons with officers to also face prosecution.
“We focus on the women but it takes two to tango,” she tells us. Sally disagrees arguing you “can’t blame a prisoner because who would refuse?” and believes the “one in uniform” is the only person culpable.
Vanessa adds: “The prisoners should be charged under the Bribery Act of 2010. There’s also the prison disciplinary system and they can be moved.
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