From Promising Prison Officer at 23 to Life-Altering Challenges: A Journey Unfolds

In the summer of 2022, Cherrie-Ann Austin-Saddington, a 26-year-old prison officer, found herself at a crossroads.

While spending time in the day room at HMP The Verne in Dorset, a space where inmates can peruse books and newspapers, she was approached by a prisoner named Bradley Trengrove. He handed her a magazine, inside which was a piece of paper bearing the number of his secret, unauthorized mobile phone.

“I was torn,” she recalls. “Should I report this, or let it go? The thought of messaging him didn’t even cross my mind at that moment.”

Nevertheless, she held onto the slip of paper, initiating a series of poor decisions that eventually entangled her in a forbidden relationship with Trengrove, leading to her downfall from prison officer to convicted criminal.

Reflecting on this pivotal choice, Austin-Saddington acknowledges it as a lifelong regret. Her story sheds light on significant issues within the prison system, particularly concerning the recruitment and oversight of staff.

Cherrie-Ann is one of dozens of prison officers in recent years to enter into sexual relationships with inmates. In response to a freedom of information request, the Ministry of Justice told me 64 prison staff have been recommended for dismissal because of inappropriate relationships with prisoners between March 31, 2019, and April 1, 2024.

This is likely to be a fraction of the true number. It does not include those who resigned before they could be sacked, those who were not members of staff (such as employees of the NHS and other organisations who work in prisons) and, of course, those who were never caught.

This phenomenon goes far beyond the bad judgment of a few individuals – it shows there is a systemic problem within the Prison Service.

Overwhelmingly, it’s female former prison officers who have had relationships with male prisoners who are facing criminal charges. In May, Cherrie-Ann became one of at least ten women in the past year alone to be convicted of misconduct in public office for this reason.

Linda De Sousa Abreu was sentenced to 15 months in prison in January, after a clip of her having sex with an inmate at HMP Wandsworth went viral. Morgan Farr Varney was sentenced to ten months in May after she was captured on CCTV going into a cupboard with a prisoner at HMP Lindholme in South Yorkshire.

Toni Cole and Aimee Duke worked at HMP Five Wells in Northamptonshire at the same time; they were both sentenced to 12 months earlier this year following their relationships with two different prisoners.

Katie Evans was barely 21 when she began her affair with an inmate; she received a 21-month sentence in March. Kerri Pegg, former governor of HMP Kirkham in Lancashire, was sentenced to nine years in May following her relationship with a notorious drug-trafficker.

In this crowded field, Cherrie-Ann’s story stands out. She knew Trengrove was a convicted sex offender. She was arrested in May 2023 after she was caught trying to smuggle a Calpol syringe to him, which he wanted her to use to inseminate herself with his sperm.

And in February 2024 – nine months after their relationship ended and more than a year before her case came to court – she suffered a spinal stroke that left her paralysed from the chest down, which was why the judge decided to suspend her two-year sentence.

‘I know I didn’t get prison time, but I am locked inside my body for the rest of my life,’ Cherrie-Ann, now 29, tells me from her wheelchair at her home in Weymouth, Dorset.

She pleaded guilty to misconduct in public office. What lay behind that reveals how some of the most dangerous men in the country can get what they want, even behind bars, by gaining control over the staff. ‘Working in the job, you hear all these stories about people having relationships with prisoners. You think: “That’s awful. God, how can they do that?” I never thought I’d be that person. And I was.’

Her eyes brim with tears. ‘How did I let that happen to me?’

Cherrie-Ann’s childhood ended early. She gave birth to a daughter and became a single mother at 16. There was a year of college, followed by work in social care, helping people in their homes.

‘I really enjoyed it,’ she nods. ‘I like to make other people happy.’ But she quit in 2018 when she became pregnant with twins with a new partner at 22.

‘I had a long gap to think about what I wanted to do with my life,’ she says. That’s when she saw the online ad for the prison officer’s job. ‘I wanted to find a career, to better myself for my family.’

She attended an assessment day. ‘There were three rooms and inside each was a different actor, playing a prisoner with a situation that needed solving. Two got up and were quite aggressive. You had to calm the situation down.’

The process seemed designed to identify candidates who could take an accurate headcount and de-escalate aggressive situations.

The job offer came within a few weeks: £1,800 a month to work long, irregular hours, beginning in July 2019, when she was 23.

The Verne, a Category C jail for sex offenders, five miles south of Weymouth, is not a typical prison. A third of inmates are over 60; Gary Glitter served part of his sentence there. ‘You get a false sense of security at The Verne, because [the inmates] are very respectful,’ she says. ‘You forget they are also very dangerous and very manipulative.’

During the early weeks of training, she was warned she would be committing a crime if she had an inappropriate relationship, but ‘I didn’t think a prisoner would ever be able to manipulate me’.

When Bradley Trengrove was transferred to The Verne in January 2022, she was sharing a single room in a B&B with her three young children. She’d recently escaped from a relationship.

Trengrove was at The Verne for months before she even noticed him. She was at a workshop where inmates learn bricklaying when he said he wanted to borrow a copy of Farmers Weekly. There was nothing unusual about that kind of request, so she found the magazine on her wing and left it in Trengrove’s post slot.

Then she began to see him everywhere. ‘He’d be like, “All right, Miss? Thanks for the magazine. Everything all right?” It started like that.’

He was popular with the other prison officers. ‘He’d come to the office door and start making jokes,’ she recalled.

Three or four weeks after he borrowed the magazine, he returned it with his phone number hidden inside. He also asked her to kiss him.

She decided to just try to keep her distance from Trengrove, but it was futile. ‘Every time I stepped out, he was there,’ says Cherrie-Ann.

It was one or two texts a day, at first, she says. ‘He’d message me and say: “I saw you at work earlier. You looked nice.” ’

Trengrove also got his mother, brother and grandmother to contact her. ‘It was like I’d gained a family of support,’ she says. ‘And then, a couple of months in, he said: “I think I’m falling in love with you.”’

Of course, Cherrie-Ann knew Trengrove was a convicted sex offender. He told her it was because he’d had a relationship when he was 15 with a girl who was six months younger than him; he had cheated on her and, when he turned 16, she’d reported him. Cherrie-Ann says: ‘He was saying, “She stitched me up”. ’

It’s a shame she didn’t Google him. In 2015, he was described as ‘exceptionally dangerous’ when he was sentenced to 13 years for ‘repeatedly raping a teenage girl’ and having sexual activity with a child. He told Cherrie-Ann he was going to be out in three months – another lie. When I ask why she didn’t check his conditional release date, she winces. ‘I don’t know why. I was blinded.’

A few weeks after he told her he loved her, their relationship became physical.

Trengrove had been given a job as a general handyman, which came with privileges: he had the freedom to walk around the workshop area without anyone questioning why he was there. ‘He’d nod at me if it was quiet down there,’ she says. ‘We’d find somewhere where there was no one around.’

Trengrove would later claim they had sex 30 to 40 times. A wild exaggeration, Cherrie-Ann says. ‘I think it was maybe four or five times in total. We were together for a number of hours each time – two and a half maybe – and we’d sit and talk, get physical, then carry on talking again.’

It must have been flattering to have all this attention, I say.

‘I think so,’ she replies. ‘I’ve had a lot happen to me in younger life that’s skewed my way of thinking… I feel like I have to give my person everything because I’m not enough.’

Most of the time, the sex was ‘quite aggressive’, she says, adding: ‘I just said yes to everything.’

During her trial, it emerged she had stored his number in her phone as ‘Husband to Be’.

‘It’s ridiculous,’ she admits now. But it made sense at the time. She’d met his family; she’d become close with his mum. He told her he had bought a plot of land and printed off pictures of the kind of place he was going to build for them to live in with her kids: ‘He was presenting me with a future. He gave me hope.’

The third time they had sex, Cherrie-Ann says, she became pregnant. She took the positive test in to show Trengrove. He was delighted. A couple of weeks later, she lost the baby. She had to deal with Trengrove’s frustration. ‘Bradley was fixated on having a child,’ she says.

She had been a keen amateur boxer, winning regional titles. But she says Trengrove told her: ‘You need to stop boxing. You can’t try to have a baby and box at the same time.’

He became increasingly controlling. If she missed a call, he would cross-examine her. ‘He’d have to be on the phone to me from the minute I walked out of the prison gates and got in my car until I’d fallen asleep. Sometimes I would have to wait until he allowed me to go to bed.’

She felt she had to obey him; he could report her and ruin her life. Even though he was behind bars, he seemed to have all the power.

In March 2023, seven months into their relationship, Trengrove’s cell was searched and his phone was found with all her messages discussing their physical relationship in explicit detail.

He was immediately moved to HMP Channings Wood, a two-hour drive away. Cherrie-Ann handed in her resignation the same day.

It was the end of her career in the Prison Service, but her relationship with Trengrove continued. Using his mother as a go-between, he begged Cherrie-Ann to go and see him in his new prison.

HMP Channings Wood would never have allowed her name on the list of visitors, so Trengrove told her she had to change her name by deed poll, which she did. Such was the extent of the control he was able to exert over her.

On visits, Trengrove seemed delighted to see her. ‘But he would slip in little digs about my appearance,’ she says. ‘Tiny things. “I’d prefer your hair to be a different colour,” or “You should wear make-up – you don’t look right without it.” ’

By then making her living teaching boxing and in the best shape of her life, Trengrove still made comments about her appearance, she says, such as: ‘Look at you – you’re getting fat.’

Before her fourth visit, in May 2023, Trengrove told her to bring the Calpol syringe. ‘He wanted me to inseminate myself.’

When she arrived at Channings Wood, where visitors are routinely searched, she was asked whether she had anything on her. She told staff about the syringe hidden in her bra. She was then told she was under arrest.

But this still wasn’t enough to end their relationship. It continued for another two weeks, with Cherrie-Ann ever more dependent on Trengrove’s family for support. But once the police visited her at home and showed her Trengrove’s rap sheet, she knew it had to end.

She got a message from his mother saying he had tried to kill himself. In early 2024 she received a bloodstained letter. ‘It was ten pages of him saying he can’t live without me, that he will find me.’

Cherrie-Ann shared every message with the police, her new solicitor and social services. She was keen to demonstrate that she was now doing the right thing.

Looking at the bigger picture, the female former prisoner officers convicted over the last 12 months were recruited to work in a service stretched to the limit. They were either the wrong people for the job, or inappropriately managed, or both.

‘People don’t understand the job,’ Cherrie-Ann says simply. ‘They are desperate for work, so they’ll take anything. Prisons are so short of staff that I don’t think enough attention is paid to the staff they’ve got.’

For short periods, she was drafted in to provide emergency cover at HMP Portland and HMP Bristol, where female officers were even more exposed; twice, when she was at Portland, she says two different inmates tried to grab her and pull her into their cells

The relationship with Trengrove has left Cherrie-Ann racked with guilt. But she was young, naive and desperately in need of support. Her story follows a pattern familiar to anyone who has studied the warning signs of coercive control.

It is unusual for prisoners to be prosecuted for encouraging misconduct in public office. But after reading Trengrove’s messages to Cherrie-Ann, the Crown Prosecution Service determined that he, too, should go on trial. He was found guilty and got another two years and three months to serve on top of his 13-year sentence.

In his ruling, the judge said, ‘This was a relationship of equal halves, both making the wrong decision.’

‘I agree and I disagree,’ Cherrie-Ann says when I put this to her. ‘I am equally guilty. But now I’ve had time to reflect – being in a wheelchair, I’m sitting around a lot – I do think I was very vulnerable. He did take advantage of me. He knew what he was doing.’

I ask if she thinks Trengrove groomed her. She lowers her eyes, as if considering what to do with this opportunity to absolve herself a little. ‘Yes,’ she eventually replies, ‘there was a lot of pursuing there. But equally, I did wrong. It’s all well and good saying that he groomed me, but I also take responsibility.’

When Cherrie-Ann heard that Trengrove’s sentence had been extended, she felt guilty at first.

‘I thought it wasn’t fair – he’s getting a longer sentence, and I’ve had mine suspended,’ she says. ‘But later on, when I thought about it, I was glad. I know what kind of man he is. He’s an extremely dangerous man.’

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