A lady has revealed how an undercover police officer shaped a long-term intimate relationship together with her with out disclosing his actual id, vanished from her life – after which reappeared seven years later.
When the officer got here again, she says, he persuaded her to interrupt up together with her then boyfriend of 5 years, saying he needed to renew their relationship and have kids collectively.
He then slept together with her for a single evening, disappearing from her life once more earlier than daybreak the subsequent morning with out clarification. She feared he had made her pregnant as he had not needed to make use of a condom, and so she needed to get the morning-after capsule.
The girl, generally known as Maya, has described how the officer, who used the faux identify Rob Harrison, tormented her throughout their relationship with what she felt was controlling and coercive behaviour, similar to repeatedly accusing her – falsely – of infidelity through textual content messages after which not talking to her.
She stated his abusive behaviour drove her to self-harm and to make use of heroin. “Generally I hope that he actually beloved me. Different occasions I feel, ‘oh, you sick bastard’,” she stated.
Maya had began the one-year relationship with “Harrison” in 2006, whereas he was infiltrating pro-Palestinian campaigners.
His conduct is to be examined by a judge-led public inquiry, which is how about 139 undercover officers spied on more than 1,000 predominantly leftwing groups between 1968 and at least 2010. One of many key points for the inquiry is how the police spies incessantly formed intimate relationships with women, usually lasting years, with out telling them they had been undercover officers infiltrating political teams. Some fathered children throughout their deployments.
Harrison declined to remark. His lawyer stated the officer had “supplied an in depth assertion to the inquiry and is co-operating with the inquiry” and believed that was “the right venue” to take care of the matter.
Maya came upon solely in 2019 that Harrison was a police officer, which prompted her to expertise durations of suicidal emotions and additional self-harm.
In a three-year covert deployment that began in 2004, Harrison infiltrated the International Solidarity Movement, a bunch supporting Palestinians, and anti-war campaigns. As a part of his faux persona, he stated he had a job as a sound engineer in south London and was a DJ known as Boogie Knight.
What Maya calls her “shittiest relationship” began in Could 2006. She was not politically energetic – however lived subsequent door to campaigners in south London and socialised with them.
At a fundraising live performance, Harrison made a sudden transfer on her, she stated, asking out of the blue – “‘So that you wish to kiss me now?’ And I’m like, what?. I used to be shocked and flattered on the identical time.” She was in her 20s, youthful than Harrison, and inexperienced in relationships.
Throughout their relationship, she stated, he noticed her solely when he visited her house at evening, and they might not often exit as a pair. “I just about remoted myself from individuals who had been excellent pals,” she stated.
She stated she puzzled “how a lot was he actually utilizing me to spy on individuals, versus how a lot was he utilizing me only for intercourse, as a result of, when he would come spherical, it might be 11 at evening, one within the morning, these sort of loopy hours.
“I used to be all the time getting textual content messages … accusing me of operating off with any individual else … he simply wouldn’t reply to any of my calls. And so that may make me extra frantic.”
She added: “I indulged in a variety of self-harm. After which I might inform him afterwards. After which he [would say] ‘I don’t need you to harm your self’. After which we’re again collectively. Then he comes up with extra accusations. And it was identical to this cycle.
“I might have my telephone consistently on, as a result of he’d be sending a textual content message at one within the morning, saying, ‘look out the window’. And I look out the window, and there he’s exterior the window, after which he comes into the home.” She added that she feared that if she didn’t reply, he would accuse her of sleeping with one other man.
“It simply made me consistently on anxiousness mode for a lot of months as a result of I used to be even too afraid to fall asleep in case he had texted,” she stated.
She added: “He led me to consider that his outbursts of unreasonable behaviour had been as a consequence of previous trauma”.
Round April 2007, Harrison advised Maya he needed to transfer to Durham to take care of his mom, who was dying of most cancers. She had not met his household as he had stated he had little contact with them.
She was devastated by his abrupt departure. “I didn’t know the way to deal with that, and I turned to heroin. I by no means even smoked cigarettes. I didn’t smoke weed. I simply went straight to class A.” She took heroin for 3 months.
For a number of years, they didn’t meet however exchanged intermittent emails. She remembers one e mail “saying ‘we must always meet up after which I can let you know all about it’. After which he stated, ‘then you may fuck me’. I simply felt so offended.”
In August 2014, the officer bought again in contact with Maya, nonetheless utilizing the faux identify of Harrison. He claimed to reside close by and to be working as a company guide.
“He advised me that in all of the years that he’d been away, he’d by no means been with one other lady, that he couldn’t cease pondering of me, that he was so sorry he needed to go away, that he needed to bury his mum alone, and that if there was any likelihood we might get again collectively.”
Maya stated he advised her he needed to have kids collectively. On the time she had been residing together with her boyfriend, however she broke up with him after Harrison persuaded her over a number of months to renew their relationship.
In February 2015, she and Harrison once more slept collectively. “He had intercourse with me, after which I by no means noticed him once more. He left within the early hours of the morning … perhaps 4am, 5am … earlier than daybreak.”
Harrison had advised her he didn’t wish to use a condom. “I simply was so scared that I may very well be pregnant, so I needed to go and get an emergency morning-after capsule. I nonetheless suppose to this present day, if I had completely trusted him, if I used to be able to have household, if I didn’t get that emergency capsule, I might have had his child by now, however that he didn’t even talk with me in any respect after that,” she stated.
He had returned to her just a few months after Theresa May, the then home secretary, had commissioned the public inquiry in March 2014, following a sequence of revelations in regards to the misconduct of the undercover officers.
She doesn’t know why he returned to her and stated he needed to marry her. It isn’t identified when he had left the police.
Maya final heard from Harrison in 2016, when he despatched her a cryptic e mail to say he thought he had seen her at a practice station, including: “Then I remembered the clouds and the storm, and they’re coming. Sure, they’re coming.”
