A former female prison guard received a suspended sentence after pleading guilty to a six-month sexual relationship with a convicted rapist she met while on duty at a southwest England prison.
Cherrie-Ann Austin-Saddington, 26 at the time of the affair, admitted to the relationship with Bradley Trengrove, an inmate serving a 13-year sentence for rape and sexual activity with a child, at HMP The Verne in Dorset in the summer of 2022.
The relationship began after Trengrove slipped Austin-Saddington a note concealed inside a copy of Farmers Weekly magazine containing his covert mobile phone number. She did not report the note, and the two eventually began exchanging messages, speaking by phone and meeting in prison workshop areas.
Trengrove testified that the pair engaged in sexual activity between 30 and 40 times. Austin-Saddington placed the number considerably lower, saying the encounters numbered “perhaps four or five times in total,” adding that each was consensual.
In May 2025, a judge suspended Austin-Saddington’s two-year sentence, citing her paralysis following a spinal stroke she suffered in February 2024. “I know I didn’t get prison time, but I am locked inside my body for the rest of my life,” she said.
Austin-Saddington resigned from her post after a cell search at HMP The Verne uncovered communications between her and Trengrove on a smuggled mobile phone, after which he was transferred to HMP Channings Wood. She was arrested in May 2023 after attempting to bring a syringe into Channings Wood, which Trengrove intended to use in an effort to impregnate her.
Austin-Saddington was convicted of misconduct in a public office. She had been fully aware that Trengrove was a convicted sex offender. “I knew he was a sex offender because it was a sex offenders’ prison,” she told reporters. She said Trengrove had convinced her that his conviction stemmed from a misrepresented relationship he had at age 15.
She told reporters she was homeless and emotionally vulnerable when the relationship began. “I just wasn’t in a very good place or a stable mind at the time, and Bradley came along,” she said. She described clinging to the relationship out of a desire for stability. “I wanted a stable life. That’s what I wanted. I don’t know why I even entertained the idea of Bradley. I think I was just looking for someone to support me. I wanted that stable life that I wasn’t getting anywhere else.”
Austin-Saddington also spoke to a difficult personal history that she said shaped her thinking. “I’ve had a lot happen to me in my younger life that’s skewed my way of thinking. I’ve been sexually assaulted on quite a few occasions. I feel like I have to give my person everything because I’m not enough.”
Reflecting on the nature of the relationship, she pushed back on characterizations of it as a romantic obsession. “A lot of people would say I was crazy in love with him. I’d say that he was the only bit of support in my life, and I clung on to it.”
Trengrove had been described as “exceptionally dangerous” at the time of his 2015 sentencing. After Austin-Saddington’s arrest, his controlling behavior became more apparent. He had begun monitoring her phone calls and demanding regular updates following a miscarriage she suffered in late 2022, leaving her, she said, feeling responsible for his emotional welfare.
Following her arrest, authorities notified child protective services, and Austin-Saddington’s twin children were removed from her custody.
As of November 2025, she had not seen the children, now 6 years old. The ordeal took a toll on her eldest daughter as well. “She saw it all, which was really difficult,” Austin-Saddington said, adding that her daughter struggled in school, making her “feel awful.”
“I felt like I just wanted to get in my bed for the rest of my life and never leave it,” she said.
Austin-Saddington, who married a tattoo artist in November 2024 and relies on him as her caregiver, said she has since recognized that she was deceived. She is working with a domestic abuse organization and has expressed a desire to help others in similar situations. “I do feel like I still need to give back,” she said.
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