A woman who was deceived into a sexual relationship by an undercover police officer has launched legal action in an attempt to see him prosecuted.
The environmental campaigner, who wants to remain anonymous, hopes to compel Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, to prosecute Jim Boyling, a police spy.
Undercover officers who infiltrated political organisations frequently deceived women into intimate relationships, which often lasted many years, without disclosing their true identities.
However, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) previously decided there was not enough evidence to prosecute the spies on offences such as rape, indecent assault and misconduct in public office.
The woman, known as Monica, is the first to file a lawsuit challenging this refusal. She said: “What I went through, and other people went through, is wrong. I don’t think that my private life and my sexuality should be something that should be spied on, or used to infiltrate organisations that are involved in trying to bring positive change.
“I was lied to, and I was encouraged to be intimate and sexual with somebody who I would never, ever have got involved with if I had known who he was, if I had known his true motives and if I had known his true identity.”
Police chiefs have claimed that undercover officers sent to spy on campaigners were not permitted under any circumstances to form sexual relationships with them.
In recent years, women who were deceived have started a series of legal actions to hold police to account and uncover the truth of what happened to them.
At least 12 women have been paid compensation by police after suing them for the emotional trauma caused by the men’s deception. Police chiefs have been compelled to issue apologies to most of the women after admitting the relationships were “abusive, deceitful, manipulative and wrong”.
Boyling, an officer with the Metropolitan police, went undercover between 1995 and 2000, pretending to be an environmental and animal rights campaigner.
He did not respond when asked for comment. Previously he has denied he committed any criminal offence or misconduct while undercover. He has said he carried out his undercover work with the approval of the police.
During his covert deployment, he had sexual relationships with three women, two of whom have secured apologies and compensation from the police.
Now the third woman, Monica, has come forward and described for the first time how she had a six-month relationship with Boyling in 1997 when she was 27. She said she was a “very idealistic, very motivated” activist in Reclaim the Streets, an environmental group.
She believed it was a significant relationship for her. She said: “[ Boyling was friendly and engaging. I was really excited by the relationship. I loved him in a way. I really felt strongly for him.”
However, she ended the relationship in October 1997. “I did not really know who he was,” she said.
Boyling did not tell her that he was an undercover officer, working for a covert unit, the Special Demonstration Squad, and had been sent to spy on campaigners.
She only found out his true identity when he was exposed in 2011. In 2014, the CPS decided not to prosecute Boyling and other undercover officers who had deceived women into intimate relationships.
Monica said: “If I don’t challenge it, and other people don’t challenge things, then everything just gets brushed under the carpet, and apologies are just empty words … and nothing really changes.”
She said she had no idea what Boyling thought about their relationship, but thinks that for him, “fundamentally it was just sex, to enhance his cover, and as a perk of the job”. Monica has also started a legal action against the police, which is is unresolved.
A CPS spokesperson said: “Due to ongoing legal proceedings we are unable to comment.”