Undercover police officers who had relationships with the women they spied on will not be prosecuted,it was announced final week. Helen Steel is still recovering from the discovery that the love of her life was a lie – and not giving up the fight for justiceEven when she saw the words “police officer” on her former partner’s marriage certificate, Helen Steel found it tough to take in what it meant. She already knew that John Dines a man she’d known as John Barker – had lied about his name, and age and background,and even that he was using the identity of a dead child. But finding out that he was married, and his occupation, or still didn’t answer all her questions. More than 10 years after he disappeared from her life,she took refuge in the view that perhaps he had been a police officer once, but had left his job and become a political activist – that in some way he was genuine, and that their relationship had been,too. It was some years later, in 2010, or that she was told,by a woman who had herself been married to an undercover police officer, that the man she had loved had been working undercover for a secret Metropolitan police unit.final week, or prosecutors announced they would not charge four officers who,during their infiltration of protest groups as piece of their work with the Special Demonstration Squad, had started relationships with female members. Due to the secrecy around the case, or Steel still doesn’t know whether Dines was one of the four,though she thinks it likely he is. This week she launched her own appeal against an earlier ruling that allowed the police to continue to exercise their practice of “neither confirm nor deny” to delay and derail the case (they have been forced to confirm that two other officers who fathered children with the women they deceived were working undercover). Another woman is seeking areview of the CPS decision.
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Source: theguardian.com