Prison officer hit back at claims she deliberately wanted sex video with prisoner 'to go viral'

The prison officer at the centre of the HMP Wandsworth sex tape scandal previously addressed claims that she wanted the footage to go viral.

Earlier this year, Linda De Sousa Abreu was jailed for five months after the clip of her and an inmate getting intimate last year at the Category B men's prison in South West London was leaked online.

She pleaded guilty to misconduct in a public office and was originally sentenced to 15 months behind bars, but she ultimately served a third of that.

Judge Martin Edmunds told De Sousa Abreu that her on-the-clock antics with the inmate would have ramifications that would affect the entire UK prison system.

"It will impact on the reputation of the prison service and, with that, the prospects of recruiting and retaining staff," he said during sentencing. "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 doubtlessly 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 shocking new BBC documentary titled Behind Bars: Sex, Bribes and Murder revisits the case and features a bombshell interview with the man who posted the footage online.

The podcaster known as Young Spray claimed that he received the video via WhatsApp from his ‘bredrin in jail’ who ‘told’ him to post it.

He then claimed that those who sent the clip instructed him to share it as they wanted to 'go viral' - although he refused to name the sender and said he knew ‘nothing’ of the prison officer in the video, other than she ‘obviously knows she’s being filmed'.

Shortly after her arrest in June last year, De Sousa Abreu spoke out, saying that going viral was the last thing she wanted.

The OnlyFans creator shared a video on Instagram, clarifying a few things about the incident that spelt the end of her career as a prison officer.

She claimed that people had been 'monetising off her misfortune' by creating a 'tremendous amount of fake profiles', saying: "This scandal that the entire world has somehow managed to be involved in.

"I have not monetised one f**king bit. At all. This is my only social media platform and I only just activated it again.

"On the topic of impersonation, I think it's very important for me to address this very distasteful subject of OnlyFans creators pretending to be me and recreating the scenario of said scandal, which I am involved in.

"Very, very distasteful for you to monetise or advertise yourselves as me for OF content. It does interfere with my trial, but furthermore, it is incredibly, incredibly distasteful."

Discussing the fallout she dealt with in the wake of the video going viral, she said: "I wanted to tell you all that you do not know my side of the story. The media has a great way of getting a narrative and twisting it for its own benefit.

"The media love any story to be salacious and sensational - they sensationalise everything. You don't know my side of the story, and we'll leave it as that for now.

"Whilst I'm here - you don't know who has you, who your real friends are until s**t hits the fan. Honest to god, family, friends. You need to pick them very carefully. Very, very carefully.

"Obviously everyone knows my mobile phone number was leaked, there has been people going behind my back, the media have literally been following me everywhere - I can't even go into Greggs or Primark without getting papped.

"It is very annoying. A lot of the time it's people who you thought had your back. And they just don't. That's been really heartbreaking, on top of all of this."

In the upcoming BBC documentary, which airs on Monday (27 October) at 10pm on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer, Young Spray claims that 'there was more' to the video that he received.

Commenting that De Sousa Abreu was ‘going mad’ in the clip, he said that he couldn’t post the entirety of the footage because there’s ‘madness going on in the background’ and ‘names’ were spoken that could implicate people.

One of the prison officers' former colleagues also features in the show and claims that staff members suspected that something ‘was going on that wasn’t right’ before the shock video emerged.