Prison Officer jailed for helping her inmate lover escape

A former prison officer has been jailed for forming a relationship with an inmate and helping him escape.

Erica Whittingham, 33, became “smitten” with violent robber Michael Seddon after her marriage broke down.

Derby Crown Court heard she believed Seddon loved her, but he then got into a relationship with another woman while on the run from HMP Sudbury.

Mark Sharman, Whittingham’s defence barrister, said: “She was smitten with this man.

“It is right that history is littered with the often foolish and extreme things people have done in the name of love.”

Judge, Recorder Balraj Bhatia QC, said it was a “difficult and sad case”.

“I accept that you may have been going through difficult times, that your marriage of 11 years standing had dissolved, and you may have been emotionally vulnerable, but you knew what you were doing was wrong,” he said.

“The evidence makes it plain that you were responsible for escorting him away from those premises in due course, in the knowledge that he was an escaped prisoner.”

Whittingham, from Bramshall, Uttoxeter, was given a three-year prison sentence after admitting two offences.

The first was harbouring an escaped prisoner, between 30 September 2019 and 18 March 2020, the second offence was misconduct in a public office, between 8 January 2017 and 3 October 2019, which related to the relationship she formed with Seddon.

Michael Seddon was serving a sentence of Imprisonment for Public Protection (IPP) for robbery. These sentences were abolished in 2012, but were previously given to prisoners regarded as too dangerous to be released when their original sentences expired.

Seddon was jailed in 2011 for tying up and attacking a 78-year-old man at his farmhouse in Bloxworth, Dorset.