After serving time for her relationship with an inmate, ex prison officer Morgan Farr Varney says the system failed her and wants reform. A former prison officer who was caught sneaking into a cupboard with an inmate says she is now fighting to change the system that “failed” her.

25 year old Morgan Farr Varney was sentenced to ten months in prison after admitting she had a relationship with a prisoner while working at HMP Lindholme in South Yorkshire. CCTV footage reportedly showed her sneaking into a cupboard with the inmate, and love letters from her were later found in his cell. She told officers she had “proper fell in love” with him, a confession that led to her arrest in January 2023. After serving her sentence, Farr Varney says she is determined to use her experience to make sure “no one else goes through what I did”

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She has now launched a petition on Change.org calling for the minimum age for prison officers to be raised from 18 to 21. According to her, she was just a “naive young woman” when she joined the service at 22, unaware of the emotional and psychological pressures that come with working around inmates. “I didn’t yet understand how power dynamics, emotional manipulation and psychological pressure could affect a person,” she wrote. “Over time, I found myself caught in a situation I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle.”

Farr Varney says she was manipulated by the inmate and left feeling like she had nowhere to turn. She claims she didn’t feel comfortable speaking to her managers, adding that there was “no safe space” to express doubt or fear at work.

“I accept responsibility for my actions, but it wasn’t just personal failure,” she continued. “It was the product of a system that placed a young, inexperienced person in a position of authority without proper safeguards.”

Now, she is using her platform to call for change, arguing that placing young officers, some “barely out of adolescence”, in high pressure roles is “unfair and unsafe”.

“Raising the minimum age for prison officers isn’t about excluding young people,” she wrote. “It’s about protecting them and the integrity of the system itself.”

Reflecting on her time behind bars, Farr Varney described prison as “the hardest experience of her life”, saying she faced humiliation, isolation and constant public judgment after her story went viral.

“The media painted me as a scandal, not a young woman who had been vulnerable and manipulated,” she said.

Her petition has already gained hundreds of signatures, with supporters saying her story highlights the need for emotional training and psychological support for prison staff.

A Prison Service spokesperson told LADbible: “The majority of prison staff are honest and hardworking, regardless of their age. We are catching more of the minority who break the rules through stronger vetting and our Counter Corruption Unit.”

Still, for Farr Varney, this is only the beginning.

“I don’t want anyone else to lose years of their life the way I did,” she said. “It is time for change.”

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