A prison officer mother-of-five who had a torrid affair with an armed robber before having his baby has revealed how their sordid relationship began – only for him to end up in jail again after attacking her.
Rachel Stanton, 32, admitted to wilful misconduct in public office after she entered a relationship with Edwin Poole while he was serving a 10-and-a-half-year sentence in HMP Five Wells, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire.
Her romance with Poole was uncovered when prison staff found three intimate photographs and a sexy love letter in the inmate’s cell.
And now Stanton has spoken out for the first time as she extraordinarily blamed the stress of her job for the illegal affair – and continues to deny they ever had a sexual encounter while still in prison.
In a confessional interview, she revealed her ex-husband has taken her back and blamed Poole for not ‘flushing away’ her intimate pictures.
‘He approached me with getting this private visit for his mum. We had a few conversations,’ she told the Channel 4 documentary UK Prisons – Sex, Drugs & Corruption: UNTOLD.
‘There was a little bit of banter, probably a few inappropriate comments to one another.
‘As soon as I had done it and I had given it to him, I kind of said to him, look, you need to get rid of it. Flush it away. I’ll be honest I thought he had.
‘I knew I’d done wrong, obviously I shouldn’t have done it, and I hold my hands up.’
CCTV footage also caught the pair going into a prison storeroom for an hour, Northampton Crown Court heard, with Judge David Herbert KC saying in his sentencing remarks: ‘Some intimacy must have taken place.’
But Stanton still maintains that they had no sexual contact within the prison wires – and it was only after Poole got out that their child was conceived.
She was suspended following the discovery of their relationship in July 2022 and Poole was moved to another prison.
She continued to visit him and when he was released he moved into her parents’ home.
But after the baby was born she claims he turned nasty and assaulted her – with videos reportedly showing him wrestling with her phone.
Pictures of her injuries from that time show her lips black with bruises, and he was later recalled to prison for breaching his probation.
She continued: ‘There had been no store room or whatever they called it. My daughter was definitely not conceived in 2022. It wasn’t until the end of June 2023 that I fell pregnant.
‘A few months later I saw a different side to him. He assaulted me. He was recalled for breaching probation. That was my saving grace.
‘But I’ve now got a baby growing inside me with someone that I never ever want to see again in my life.’
Stanton had been working as a trainee G4S security first line manager at HMP Five Wells in 2022 when she met Poole.
Poole was jailed for 10-and-a-half years in 2018 after being involved in a four-day spate of violent armed robberies.
The then 27-year-old used a crowbar wrapped in a bin liner to bludgeon shop staff, while Darren Morris, 37, stole cigarettes, alcohol and, a till at convenience stores in the West Midlands and Staffordshire.
Wolverhampton Crown Court was told that thousands of pounds of goods and cash were stolen during the spree, said to be fuelled by drink and drugs, while three shopkeepers were badly hurt by Poole.
Now Stanton says that she has been taken back by her ex-husband – as they found shared ground over her new baby.
She now says that she can never regret the affair – despite Poole being the ‘biggest regret of my life’.
The ex-prison officer told the documentary: ‘My husband and I reconnected. The baby was born three months early. Instantly they had that bond.
‘As much as I regret the whole situation I can never regret her. I suppose in one respect I can never sit here and say I regret meeting him because I don’t regret her. But he was the biggest regret of my life.’
Stanton wept in the dock as she was sentenced to nine months in prison, suspended for 18 months and ordered to take part in 20 days rehabilitation activity.
Sentencing, the judge said: ‘You should have known better. Your offending is so serious it demands a custodial sentence.
‘I have to sentence you for a single offence. In short you had a relationship with a prisoner.
‘There was clear indisputable evidence between you that was discovered. They found a sexually explicit letter and some intimate images of yourself.
‘CCTV footage shows the two of you together and you were in a room privately, together. Some intimacy must have taken place.
‘She should have known what the boundaries were. It shouldn’t take training to know she shouldn’t be doing that.’
Judge Herbert gave Stanton credit for her guilty plea saying he was satisfied the relationship with Poole was ‘entirely consensual’.
He added: ‘If you can stay out of trouble you have nothing to fear but it will be hanging over your head – work hard at the order.’
Lee Egan, defending, said Stanton had not abused her position to smuggle in contraband items or allowed herself to be ‘exploited’.
He added she was an ‘inexperienced’ officer who had been chosen for a training course that would have seen her in charge of a whole landing of men at the super-prison.
Stanton, who wore no make-up, jeans and a black top, covered her head with a tote bag as she left court with a friend.
It comes as a record number of female prison guards have been fired for affairs with male inmates – with 29 given the sack in the past three years.
That compares to just nine women who lost their jobs for the same offence between 2017 and 2019.
In January, former Wandsworth prison officer Linda De Sousa Abreu was jailed for 15 months after a film of her having sex with an inmate was shared online while still in uniform.
De Sousa Abreu admitted to having sex with the same prisoner on another occasion, while she was also caught on her own body camera giving oral sex to him on the same day the original sex tape was filmed.
The explicit clip begins with her dressed in full uniform and performing a sex act on Weirich, who has a pregnant girlfriend, at the Category A jail.
It then shows her having sex with the serial thief while his cellmate films on a mobile phone. Footage of the cell shows a TV and piles of clothes heaped over a bunk bed.
The friend who is smoking while recording says: ‘Guys we’ve made history, this is what I’m telling you.’
In the past year, imprisoned gangsters have claimed they paid female prison officers up to £2,000 for sex in their prison cells.
Other women officers have claimed that these crimes lead to inmates making ‘sexual approaches as they believe that they are ‘fair game’.
Out of the 180 investigations the MoJ said 73 cases saw disciplinary action, with the vast majority of the guards being fired.
This is a jump from the 2017 to 2019 period where the annual average was just three per year.
Another officer Toni Cole, 29, was jailed for a year after being convicted of sharing 4,369 intimate messages with a con at Northamptonshire’s new ‘super-prison’ HMP Five Wells.
Appearing before Northampton Crown Court, Cole was also found to have taken part in 18 video calls with the inmate whilst engaging in ‘contact which was sexualised or flirtatious’.
Last October Cheryl Hinde, 44, who worked at HMP Kirkham was jailed for four months after she had a relationship with an inmate, which saw them spend hours on the phone together as they regularly swapped love letters.
Prison officer Hannah Angwaba, 30, was sentenced to four years in June after smuggling drugs, tobacco and mobile phones into HMP Forest Bank using her braided hair during her romance with a convicted paedophile Anton McPherson.
Elsewhere in north Wales, Wrexham, law graduate and prison lag Jessica McClearly dodged jail after sparking a romance with an inmate, which saw the pair sleep together after his release. It ended after she became pregnant but miscarried.
