A PRISON officer accused of an inappropriate sexual relationship with an inmate simply invented the fling because she was a fantasist, her barrister has told a court.

Barbara Dyer, who allegedly had a relationship with armed robber Saul Powell behind bars, was an “emotional car crash” and so wrote letters to him that were purely “fantasy”, he said.

The court heard Dyer sent sexually-charged letters to Powell, along with naked photos and a pair of her knickers.

The affair allegedly happened between February and April 2017.

During this time she moved to a different wing of the prison to where Powell was serving his sentence. She handed in her notice in March.

Using a false name, the 26-year-old continued to send letters to Powell, who is serving a 17-year sentence, and received multiple phone calls from him.

The court heard Dyer wanted to live with Powell when he got out of prison. Dyer told Powell, who was jailed for targeting escorts in a robbery attempt, she was “waiting for him” and “loved him” in each of her letters.

She even said she would wear her grandmother’s engagement ring to warn off other men.

But summing up the defence case, barrister Daniel Chadwick argued Dyer, who denies a charge of misconduct in a public office, had no physical relationship with Powell and simply imagined it, as if writing “a teenage diary”.

He said: “

The defence’s case is that Miss Dyer never kissed Mr Powell, not in prison.

“She never did anything inappropriate with Mr Powell while in prison. The kissing is fantasy – not fact.“

He said she was an “emotional car crash” when she left the prison, as one of the inmates had stolen her handbag and personal ID.

The jury has now retired.