British women thought they'd found boyfriends who shared their beliefs. They were actually under
Two years ago, Queensland woman 'Ellie' got a call that changed her life. It was from her first love, a man named James.
She had met him in 2001 when she was living in London. She was just 21 and he was 33, but that didn't seem to matter. They were good together.
"We just clicked. He was chatty and a good listener. He was very charming," Ellie said.
They were together for about a year before James broke it off. He had to move away, but they remained friends.
But in 2018, he phoned her in Australia to make a startling confession: he'd been living a lie. He was an undercover police officer who'd been sent to spy on her and those in her friendship circle.
"He was one of my oldest friends. So, to find out it was a complete lie was a lot."
Ellie, who's never spoken publicly before, is one of at least 30 women who were tricked into having relationships with undercover officers working for London's Metropolitan Police Service.
Some undercover officers, including James, adopted the identities of dead children and infiltrated environmental protest groups.
A handful fathered children with their targets.
Another former officer started a new life in Australia, before his target tracked him down in Sydney.
The long-running scandal has finally culminated in public hearings of the Undercover Policing Inquiry, one of the biggest in UK legal history.
Ellie is hoping it will deliver her some answers.
A secret squad is formed
In 1968, a secret unit was established within the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police, known as the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS).
That same year, more than 200 people were arrested and many others injured, including police, during anti-Vietnam war protests in central London.
In the decades that followed, SDS's reach expanded as it gathered intelligence on more than 1,000 political groups, often feeding that information to the security service, MI5.
Some right-wing organisations were infiltrated, but the majority of targets were left-wing groups that challenged the status quo.
Some activists adopted extreme measures, like violence, vandalism and firebombing.
Many others were peaceful. But that didn't stop police from prying.
Along came a spy
As a 21-year-old working in a London animal hospital in 2001, Ellie wasn't of much interest to police. But her friend 'Wendy' was.
Wendy was a member of a hunt saboteurs' group, which aimed to disrupt organised fox hunts.
Foxes would be chased and killed by packs of dogs, usually with a group of horse riders following close behind.
In England, confrontations between animal welfare groups and hunt participants would sometimes turn violent, but Wendy said her group knew the law and used it to their advantage.
"Our goal was to be there all day and annoy the shit out of them and stop them killing as much as possible," Wendy told the ABC.
"And we were very effective at doing that."
Effective as they may have been, they were also compromised. A police officer had secretly joined their ranks. He told the women his name was James Straven.
James had a posh accent which made him stand out from other saboteurs, but he was a committed member of the crew and soon won Wendy's trust.
"We became friends very quickly," she said.
Wendy and Ellie worked together at the animal hospital and also shared a flat.
In 2001, James began a sexual relationship with Ellie that lasted nearly a year.
"I liked the fact that he was intelligent and we shared the same political beliefs. I knew him through Wendy so I trusted him," Ellie said.
Ellie and James did the things most young couples do together: they travelled and went to gigs.
But James seemed unusually interested in her friend Wendy's whereabouts.
"He'd call [Ellie] and just ask about what I was doing," Wendy said.
James told the women he worked as a location scout for the BBC, which explained why he would often disappear on trips away.
They now know he was returning to his real life.
Building a false identity
James Straven was a cover name used by an officer known as HN16, who is now a central participant at the Undercover Policing Inquiry.
He also used the name Kevin Crossland, belonging to a child who died in a plane crash in 1966.
In 2002, James broke off the relationship with Ellie, telling her his ex-partner and children were moving to America and that he planned to live and work in Los Angeles.
"Everything happened fast. Faster than expected. And then he was gone," Ellie said.
But that wasn't the end of it.
Ellie and Wendy, both dual citizens who live in Queensland, would often return to London to see friends and James would arrange to meet them.
"Every time we would go back to visit the UK, he would miraculously be able to organise to fly into the UK and meet us," Wendy said.
"However, the one time I went to the US — to where he was supposedly living — he wasn't there."
The inquiry has been told James and Ellie had an intimate encounter as late as 2015.
When James told Ellie he was an undercover officer, it took her several months to process the news.
"It's almost like you're grieving for a friend that's died. You miss him, he gone, he's dead," she said.
"But at the same time, he's not. He never existed."
Both Ellie and Wendy have seen psychologists to help them process the feelings of anger and confusion triggered by the long-term deception.
"It made both of us feel stupid," Wendy said.
When she first met James, Wendy found him mysterious, but harmless.
Since finding out the truth, Ellie hasn't been on dates and avoids social gatherings because she's now suspicious of new people.
"You do look at people funny. You wonder who they are and what they're doing," she said.
The inquiry has been told HN16 initially denied having sexual relationships with Ellie and another target known as 'Sara,' but later admitted to them.
Through a lawyer, HN16 declined to comment because public hearings are now underway. His real identity hasn't been restricted, but it hasn't been formally released.
Wendy said the tactics he adopted were completely disproportionate to the disruptions caused by hunt saboteurs.
"You can't just go and invade somebody's entire life and intricately weave webs of lies, because you'd like to know a bit more about them," she said.
Women's lives 'wrecked'
Among the dozens of women still searching for answers is Helen Steel.
She met John Barker at the age of 22 while she was volunteering at London Greenpeace, an environmental protest group that was distinct from the international organisation.
John had a van and would drop other members of the protest group home after meetings.
In 1990, they fell deeply in love — or so Helen thought.
"He told me that he wanted to start a family with me and wanted us to live together for the rest of our lives," she told the ABC.
But the man Helen loved was a police officer who was already married.
His real name was John Dines and he'd adopted the identity of a child who'd died of leukemia to infiltrate the organisation and gather intelligence.
After a two-year relationship, John appeared to suffer a mental breakdown and disappeared. Helen was worried for his welfare and wanted to find him.
After years of painstaking research, trawling public records and digging through his backstory, she discovered she'd been deceived.
"At that moment, the bottom dropped out of my world. He was the person who I thought I knew best," she said.
Once she learnt his real name, she discovered he had moved to Australia and was working for Charles Sturt University's Graduate School of Policing and Security.
"I was extremely concerned that he might actually be training other officers," she said.
In 2016, she confronted him at Sydney Airport while a friend filmed the encounter from a distance.
"He apologised to me but frankly, I think the apology is a hollow one. John Barker was actually a caring person. He cared about me and he loved me," she said.
"And when I saw the reality of the actor who was playing him, he … didn't give a stuff about me."
Four years on, John Dines still works for the Graduate School of Policing, but not in a teaching role.
The university refused to comment and Mr Dines didn't respond to the ABC's attempts to contact him.
In 2016, he told The Guardian newspaper he gave Ms Steel a "personal and unreserved apology for all and any hurt that she may have suffered".
Three children born out of relationships
In a police 'tradecraft' manual written in 1995, SDS officers were warned that sexual relationships were a "thorny issue" and were best avoided.
"However, if you are doing your job properly, men and women in the field will experience occasional approaches from males and females, straight and gay," the manual said.
Two female SDS officers are alleged to have had sexual encounters with targets, but the practice was far more common amongst men.
At least three women had children with the undercover police sent to spy on them.
In October this year, the Metropolitan Police paid an undisclosed sum to a 35-year-old man, whose biological father had been posing as an anarchist named Bob Robinson.
The officer, Bob Lambert, previously apologised and the Metropolitan Police paid the mother more than $700,000 in compensation.
Helen Steel said she'd have never consented to a relationship with an undercover officer and she blames a culture of "institutional sexism" which allowed women to be "used".
"If we'd known they were undercover officers, we would not have consented, so they sought to undermine our autonomy and our rights," Ms Steel said.
Harriet Wistrich, a lawyer who has represented many of the women affected, said her clients felt violated.
"Even though the sexual relationship at the time was consensual, it was consensual on the basis of a massively false premise," she told the ABC.
In 2018, the UK's High Court backed the decision of the Crown Prosecution Service, which decided not to prosecute an undercover officer for sexual offences relating to a deceitful relationship.
'They have a right to know'
The Special Demonstration Squad was disbanded in 2008.
In 2015, police apologised and paid settlements to seven women including Helen Steel, describing the relationships as "abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong".
"Undercover policing is a lawful and important tactic but it must never be abused," police said in a statement.
While police say they're cooperating with the inquiry, they've refused to disclose most details about their spying operations to the women themselves.
Ellie, Wendy and Helen are hoping the inquiry will reveal who in the police command knew about the relationships, what intelligence was gathered and who else may have been spying on them.
"When you look at the consistency of the tactics and the emotional manipulation used by these officers, it's absolutely clear that this wasn't the actions of rogue officers," Ms Steel said.
She said it is likely many women are still unaware they were spied on, because the inquiry has withheld many of the officers' cover names.
"We want the cover names of all the officers to be released, so that people can actually come forward to give the counter-evidence to those officers," she said.
"If they're allowed to give evidence in secret their evidence will go unchallenged."
Harriet Wistrich said there was "no justification" for undercover police tricking their targets into relationships.
She hopes the inquiry, which isn't expected to conclude until 2023, will help the women get their lives back on track.
"They have a right to know why this happened and what was written about them," she said.
"They will never heal without knowing."