A British police spy married an activist he met while undercover in the environmental protest movement and then went on to have children with her.
He is the fourth spy now to have been identified as an undercover police officer engaged in the covert surveillance of eco-activists. Three of those spies are accused of having had sexual relationships with the people they were targeting.
The details of the activities of the fourth spy, who is still a serving police officer, emerged as the senior police officer managing the crisis in undercover operations insisted that officers were strictly banned from having sexual relationships with their targets.
Merseyside Chief Constable Jon Murphy said it was “never acceptable” for undercover officers to sleep with people they were targeting.
“Something has gone badly wrong here. We would not be where we are if it had not,” he said, referring to three inquiries into undercover policing that have been launched in response to the Guardian’s investigation into the first spy, Mark Kennedy, an undercover officer who had several sexual relationships during his seven-year deployment.
Murphy, the national lead officer on serious and organized crime for the Association of Chief Police Officers, declined to speak about the Kennedy case directly, but said officers who infiltrated the environmental movement were not permitted “under any circumstances” to sleep with activists.
“It is grossly unprofessional. It is a diversion from what they are there to do. It is morally wrong because people have been put there to do a particular task and people have got trust in them,” he said.
Meanwhile the ex-wife of the fourth undercover police officer spoke about her relationship. The woman was married to Jim Boyling, a Metropolitan police officer who spent five years living under environmental campaigners between 1995 and 2000.
Using the identity “Jim Sutton,” Boyling infiltrated Reclaim the Streets, a group famed for bringing streets to a standstill in unruly protests against cars.
During his time undercover, when he is said to have become a key organizer, Boyling met a 28-year-old woman and began a relationship with her. He later disappeared from her life.
It was only when he reappeared a year later that he told the woman he was a police officer. They later married and had two children but divorced two years ago.
Speaking for the first time, the woman gave a detailed account of their relationship and alleges that Boyling encouraged her to change her name by deed poll, apparently to conceal their relationship from his seniors in the police. He also told her a ruling that undercover operatives should not have sex with targets was unrealistic and developing relationships with activists was “a necessary tool in maintaining cover,” she said.
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