26 July 2024 , 19:12
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A female prison officer was convicted of misconduct in a public office after texts with a male inmate. Dawn MacCormack said was depressed and suffering ’brain fog’ at the time
A female prison officer has been convicted after she shared texts and calls with an inmate.
Dawn MacCormack, 42, was convicted of misconduct in a public office following a “prolific” number of messages with inmate Josh Moore. In examining the phone, police found two images of the prisoner including one with his torso exposed. Another showed him with a t-shirt on.
Following her arrest, MacCormack told a friend she had "human emotions and feelings” for Moore, who was serving an eight-year sentence at The Mount near Hemel Hempstead. Prosecutor Mark Seymour said: “She was banned by the terms of her contract not to have a social relationship with a prisoner.”
Mr Seymour said Moore had access to two illicit phones in the prison in 2019 and in August 2020. He pleaded guilty to having them, then aged 28. MacCormack, from Borehamwood, was found guilty by a jury majority of 11 to one. She had denied misconduct in a public office between January 1, 2019 and June 22, 2019.
She admitted to two charges during the trial of unauthorised transmission of either calls or texts between May 15, 2019 and June 8, 2019 for the first charge. For the second, she admitted to charged related to a second phone between June 16, 2019 and June 20, 2019.
Two phones were recovered from Moore’s cell in the prison’s Nash Wing on two separate days in June 2019. On the first phone, there were 85 calls and 4,100 texts. Mr Seymour said they “spanned every single day and were distributed for all hours of the day.”
Moore was able to obtain a second phone after the first was discovered, leading to seven calls and 272 texts in the space of two days. When MacCormack was arrested on June 22, 2019, the texts on her phone had been deleted. She told a friend in November that she is “only human.” She said: “It boils down to human feelings. I just had human emotions and feelings.”
Mr Seymour said: “The defendant’s behaviour was inappropriate. It involved a breach of her duties as a prison officer. Communication by mobile phone with an inmate is a serious offence in its own right. She failed to disclose he was in possession of illicit mobile phone. It was frankly her job to do that. The phone contact was not just the odd call or text it was genuinely prolific. She acted inappropriately with Mr Moore.”
MacCormack told defence barrister Abigail Bright she was in distress at the time of the events. Her mother, she said, was dying of pancreatic cancer and her marriage of 15 years with her husband had come to an end, but they were still living in the same house with their children.
MacCormack also said she had been fired from her previous job as a receptionist in 2016, saying her bosses had accused her of bringing mental health issues to work. She applied to join the prison service in April 2018. During her contact with Moore, MacCormack said she had “brain fog” and was suffering from depression.