A woman who accepted a marriage proposal from a married undercover police officer has begun legal action against the Metropolitan police, alleging that she suffered “abusive, cold-hearted, psychological torture” from his deception.
The woman, known only as Andrea, had a two-year relationship with the officer, during which time the spy told her that he wanted a baby with her but did not tell her that he already had a wife and child and was an undercover cop.
The policeman, who operated under the fake name of Carlo Neri between 2001 and 2005, has been unmasked after investigations by campaigners, the Guardian and the BBC’s Newsnight programme.
Andrea called on the Met to apologise and to give a “real and honest” explanation for what had happened to her, adding that Neri’s deployment was not justified. She said she had suffered immense trauma as the police had “abused my life”, while the campaign groups he had infiltrated were not violent.
It is the latest legal action against the Met police over the conduct of undercover spies who infiltrated hundreds of political groups from 1968 onwards. A number of them entered into relationships with the women they spied on. In November the force unreservedly apologised and paid compensation to seven women who had been deceived into forming “abusive and manipulative” long-term relationships with undercover officers.
On another occasion, the Met paid more than £400,000 to a woman who had discovered by chance that the father of her son was an undercover officer.
Andrea said she fell in love with Neri and thought they would probably spend the rest of their lives together, but the relationship ended after he appeared to have a suicidal breakdown – a story she now believes he fabricated. The wedding was called off.
She has only recently discovered that Neri was an undercover officer. Anti-racist campaigners and members of the Socialist party say Neri took part in their political activities in the early part of the last decade.
Andrea said she was part of a circle of friends who were trade unionists and active in campaigning against racism, but she was not particularly involved herself. She said his relationship with her seemed to have been “a conduit” to give him the credibility to persuade the activists to trust him.
She met Neri at a big anti-war demonstration in London in September 2002. He struck her as a “quiet, thoughtful, very straightforward, very down to earth” man. Quickly they started a relationship. “We were pretty much together, inseparably, for quite a while and he moved in with me six weeks later,” Andrea said.
A few months later, on New Year’s Eve, he proposed to her during a party at their home. “We had friends round, he cooked lots of food for them and he asked me to marry him.”
She said the relationship had been “quite quick, quite intense, but it felt right and I said yes. And we started to make plans to get married. It felt utterly real, completely real.” She said their discussions about the wedding continued for some months.
Andrea said Neri frequently told her he loved her. “He was quite expressive, but in a quiet way. He was very, very caring, very loving and very emotionally articulate to me.”
According to Andrea, she and the other campaigners never met his family, but he became “embedded in her family”, meeting her mother and close relatives and buying them presents. “He kind of made an effort to be in contact with them a lot … and they reciprocated because they liked him.”
However, their relationship ended after he seemed to have a mental breakdown and said he was thinking of killing himself. He said his father in Italy had died and then that his sister had told him she had been sexually abused by their father.
His behaviour changed in a “very marked and very dramatic way”, she said. “He looked different, he behaved differently, he became distant, he became volatile, he was tearful, he was withdrawn.”
She now believes that this was a “cruel and manipulative” fabrication, as other undercover officers have portrayed themselves as having a similar kinds of breakdowns to withdraw from their covert missions.
Like other undercover officers, Neri developed an elaborate fictitious persona during his deployment. He said he earned his living as a locksmith and later in a firm importing Italian food and wine, allowing him to disappear for days at a time.
Andrea and campaigners who have been put under surveillance are calling on the police to disclose a list of the fake names used by the undercover officers who infiltrated political groups.
Eveline Lubbers, of the Undercover Research Group, a network of activists who carried out a detailed investigation to expose Neri, said publication of the list “would allow those who have been spied on to discover what had happened to them. It would help more women to find out if their one-time boyfriends were undercover officers.”
Lubbers said this would save the women from the trauma of searching for years for the truth, like some of those who have received an apology from the police.
The relationships the undercover officers initiated with women will be among the issues that a public inquiry into undercover policing – led by a leading judge, Lord Justice Pitchford – will examine.
Paul Heron, a lawyer representing anti-racism campaigners, said the disclosure of officers’ names would enable those affected to take part in the inquiry.
The Met said it had a long-established policy of neither confirming nor denying the identity of any individual alleged to have been in a covert role, and could not comment.
