A 29-year-old female prison warden in England who was in a sexual relationship with a killer has been placed behind bars after authorities found a link between the pair on cellphones.
Twenty-nine-year-old Rebecca Green pleaded guilty in the case and recently received a 16-month prison sentence, the New York Post reported Thursday.
The relationship between herself and John Otugade who was convicted of murdering a London nightclub bouncer began in late 2022 at the HMP Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire.
Otugade, who is serving at least 25 years behind bars for the killing, apparently had a smuggled phone on which the woman was listed as “partner” in the approved contacts.
“In the spring of 2023, Green was called into a meeting when suspicions were raised about her conduct. She initially dismissed the claims, but Otugade was moved to HMP Belmarsh while investigations took place,” police said in a news release.
Authorities searched her vehicle and learned her phone contained messages suggesting the relationship between her and the inmate.
Detective Constable Tom Adams said, “As a prison officer, you have a responsibility to keep prisoners and your colleagues safe. This was a serious breach of Green’s responsibilities, and she failed to consider the potential impact on the security and safety of the staff and prisoners and how her actions undermined the work of the prison. This sentence shows how seriously the police and courts take such breaches.”
According to a report from the BBC in 2014, some prison officers are willing to take the risk when it comes to entering into sexual relationships with inmates.
Consultant psychologist Elie Godsi told the outlet, “These are not normal relationships, these are rose-tinted. These people are not seeing each other under normal circumstances. The inmates don’t have to worry about money for rent, or paying for food, they are pretty well looked after.”
“And the boundaries between people in prison are very rigid. There is an element of the forbidden fruit and some people are attracted to that,” he explained.
However, relationships with inmates are not always linked to prison guards.
In 2023, a teacher in Florida resigned after she was caught engaging in sexually explicit video chats with her prison inmate boyfriend while she was working at her school’s campus, and another teacher in Michigan was accused of smuggling drugs and other items to jail inmates whom she was supposed to be helping, according to Breitbart News.