Prison officer who had sex with inmate hits back at his version of what actually happened
A former prison officer who was sentenced to 15 months in prison for having sex with an inmate at HMP Wandsworth has argued against his version of events, claiming she was 'incredibly embarrassed' about what had happened.
Linda De Sousa Abreu had met Linton Weirich in the prison while she was a guard and he was doing time for burglary, and his version of the story is that he paid another guard £1,500 to smuggle a phone in for him and then became friends with De Sousa Abreu after she started bringing in food for inmates.
He claimed prisoners would pay £150 for her to bring in Nando's or Chinese, saying it was 'obvious' she liked him as he also suggested she 'wanted someone to look out for her on the landing'.
"She asked me to sort out an inmate who spat on her, so I did," Weirich alleged.
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However, speaking to The Sun, the former prison officer denied several aspects of his story as she said she didn't bring takeaways into the prison for inmates.
She said that HMP Wandsworth had been 'very understaffed' and that made it 'hard to manage'.
"Everyone’s doing something. I regret everything I did. I’m incredibly embarrassed," she told the paper, saying that his claims she texted him on a phone he'd had smuggled in she argued that the police had possession of her phone for a year.
"Everything that I was charged for was what I went guilty for, which was an inappropriate relationship with Linton.
"That was my fault and that’s what I went guilty for, and that’s as far as it went.
"I had sex with someone I shouldn’t have had sex with and I had an inappropriate relationship, but I didn’t do anything else."
Weirich claimed he'd had sex 'a few times' with De Sousa Abreu before the filmed encounter which went online, saying he didn't want it to be recorded as it had been by a fellow inmate.
He said the other inmates and even some prison staff called him a 'legend' but his pregnant partner found out he was having sex with a prison guard and the footage 'caused so much damage to my partner, my family and myself'.
He added that it had ended up being the 'biggest regret of his life', and was later violently attacked by another inmate while holding his three-month-old baby, with Kent Police saying the infant suffered a fractured skull.
After the footage went viral De Sousa Abreu resigned from her job at the prison and admitted to misconduct in public office, for which she was sentenced to 15 months behind bars.
She served five months at HMP Bronzefield before being released with an electronic tag
Joe Harker