An undercover police officer who used his fake identity to deceive a woman into a 19-year intimate relationship and fathered a child with her was married to a second woman at the time, a public inquiry has disclosed.
The officer hid his real identity from the first woman and never told her his actual job during their relationship. He used his fake name on the birth certificate of their son.
She only discovered in 2020 that he was a police officer who had deceived her for almost two decades. At the time of the discovery, she was engaged to be married to him. She had started the relationship in 2001, believing him to be a businessman.
It is the longest-known deception of a woman into an intimate relationship by an undercover officer. It was revealed by the Guardian two years ago.
In new filings, the undercover policing inquiry has disclosed that while the officer was subjecting her to the long-running deliberate deception, he was married to another woman.
Both women have been left devastated. The first woman, known by the pseudonym Gabriella, has not spoken publicly. Her relatives have described how the ordeal has broken her and left her “a shadow of the person we used to know”. The undercover officer had become close to Gabriella’s family who have also been devastated.
Police told the second woman, known by the pseudonym Esther, in 2021 that her husband had a relationship and a child with Gabriella. This “has had a major impact on [Esther’s] life and wellbeing, to which it has taken her time to adjust”, said the inquiry.
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It is not known how long and in what years Esther was married to the undercover officer, whose name has not been made public. They are now divorced.
The remarkable case is to be investigated by the inquiry, which is headed by retired judge Sir John Mitting.
He has been focusing on the deployment of undercover officers to spy on more than 1,000 political groups between 1968 and at least 2010. At least 25 undercover officers – nearly a fifth of those who infiltrated political movements – formed sexual relationships with members of the public without disclosing their true identity to them.
In its later stages, the inquiry will switch to investigating another aspect of undercover policing – the deployments that infiltrated criminal gangs.
The undercover officer had no role in spying on political campaigners and was tasked with gathering information about criminals.
Avon and Somerset constabulary, which deployed him, has apologised to Gabriella, and added that she had no links to criminals and played no role in his deployment. The Guardian previously used the pseudonym Mary for her.
