At least 25 undercover police officers had sex with activists they were spying on
Four women are said to have had children with officers belonging to a shadowy police unit whose members slept with more than 50 campaigners over four decades while posing as campaigners
At least 25 undercover police officers tricked activists into having sex with them, new figures reveal.
The spy cops were members of a shadowy police unit whose members are known to have slept with at least 50 women over four decades. Two of the 25 officers were women and the relationships began in the 1970s and ended in 2010. Four women are alleged to have had children with police officers who were posing as campaigners while using fake identities.
It comes as the story of a secret unit paid to spy on ordinary members of the public is now being laid bare in a shocking ITV documentary series that starts on Thursday. The Undercover Police Scandal features five women who had intimate relationships with officers who they had no idea were covertly deployed.
The scandal came to light in late 2010 when Mark Kennedy was unmasked as an undercover police spy who had a six-year relationship with a woman known as Lisa as well as two other women, the Guardian reports.
An animal rights activist got £425,000 when she dropped her legal action against ex-detective Bob Lambert. In 1985 she gave birth to his child, even though he was married with children. The woman, known as Jacqui, has said her life was "absolutely ruined" after she discovered that her son's father was an undercover officer 20 years after his birth. Lambert had abandoned them claiming he had to go on the run abroad to avoid being arrested.
Many women may still be unaware that they had intimate relationships with undercover police officers because many of the identities of the police spies have not been made public. Tactics used by the Special Demonstration Service from the late 1960s were unjustified, the Undercover Policing Inquiry has already found.
And according to Sir John Mitting, chairman of the judge-led inquiry which is still ongoing, most of the left-wing groups targeted by the unit posed no threat. He wrote in his first report: "I have come to the firm conclusion that, for a unit of a police force, it did not; and that had the use of these means been publicly known at the time, the SDS would have been brought to a rapid end."
Sir John found that by early 1974, it had become established practice for SDS agents to adopt the identities of deceased children as a cover. Among the officers named in his report is Vincent Harvey, who took on the ID of a dead six-year-old boy to infiltrate groups and deceive women, including an activist known as "Madeleine".
She only discovered she had been duped when she was told three years ago by an inquiry official. For more than 50 years, the SDS and its successor the National Public Order Intelligence Unit monitored more than 1,000 political campaigners and groups. The parents of Stephen Lawrence were among those spied upon.