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Former prison officer says he was sacked for taking sex case against his gay boss

Mr Anderson is heterosexual but that did not stop his boss from sending him shocking messages such as, ‘so u reckon I could use ur p*nis as a lolly pop?’

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An ex-prison officer claims he was sacked as part of a “witch-hunt” after he won a sexual harassment case against his boss.

Graeme Anderson was dismissed from the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS) in 2021 for giving bacon and eggs to a prisoner at Magilligan jail.

However, he claims food was regularly shared with prisoners by staff — and believes his dismissal was instead linked to the successful sexual harassment case he took against a prison governor.

Mr Anderson was sent a series of sexually explicit text messages by Andrew Cromie over a three-month period in 2019, shortly after Cromie took over as acting governor at Magilligan Prison.

Mr Anderson is heterosexual but that did not stop his boss, who is gay, from sending him the shocking messages.

One read, ‘so u reckon I could use ur p*nis as a lolly pop?’

Despite being his boss, Cromie added, ‘go on let me I won’t tell anyone.’

Another text from the prison governor read, ‘I just want to see what you are packing babe.’

Cromie sent the messages from June to September 2019, despite Mr Anderson being in a relationship with a woman.

Another text he sent to Mr Anderson read, ‘I can do some bad things with you,’ followed by ‘how big is *****’, asking about the size of his colleague’s penis.

On a separate text, he wrote, ‘don’t you love me.’

The two men had first met while escorting prisoners to court and worked together for a number of years.

“We got on well and we had a mutual friend in his boyfriend at the time. At that stage I was his boss as a senior prison custody officer. He was based in Maghaberry and he did the prisoner vans,” Mr Anderson told the Sunday World this week.

“We didn’t socialise together. I never met him outside work, and he knows I’m straight.

“In 2013 we got the opportunity to transfer to the prison service. I moved to Magilligan, he went to Maghaberry and that was the last time I saw him until 2019.”

However, after discussing the messages with his partner, he made an official complaint to NIPS chiefs in November 2019.

After a year-long investigation, Mr Anderson was told the probe had concluded that Cromie “did act in a manner which, on balance, served to harass you on the grounds of sex”.

However, Cromie held on to his job and the only sanction imposed upon him was he was not allowed to apply for promotion for two years. He remains a senior officer within the prison service.

In September 2019, at the same time he was sending the explicit messages to this colleague, Cromie took part in a questionnaire for the NI Jobfinder website in relation to his job as a prison governor.

Mr Anderson did not tell anyone about the texts from Cromie because he was embarrassed and worried about the reaction of his colleagues.