Police boss ‘seduced teen activist’ as an undercover officer
Deputy crime commissioner faces call to resign
‘My youth was used to target me’
A DEPUTY police and crime commissioner is facing calls to resign from a woman who claims he deceived her into having a sexual relationship when he was an undercover police officer in the 1990s.
Andy Coles, who holds the influential post in Cambridgeshire, is alleged to have seduced his victim while working undercover to infiltrate animal rights groups.
The woman, who wants to be referred to only as Jessica to retain her anonymity, was 19 when she said the year-long relationship started.
She claimed Mr Coles not only concealed his real job from her but failed to reveal he was married at the time.
A lawsuit has been launched against the police – making her the latest person to take legal action against undercover officers who formed relationships with unsuspecting women, some lasting years. Jessica demanded Mr Coles, 57, stepped down from his job monitoring the work of the Cambridgeshire force, saying: ‘I think that ordinary police officers would be disgusted by him.’
The case came to light after Mr Coles’ brother, the broadcaster and former member of pop group the Communards the Reverend Richard Coles, referred in his 2014 autobiography to his older sibling living a double life as an undercover officer. A member of the public tipped off the Undercover Research Group, who investigate the work of police spies, and a joint investigation was launched with the Guardian newspaper.
They found Mr Coles joined the Metropolitan Police in 1982 before working undercover between 1991 and 1995 for its Special Demonstration Squad. Using the name Andy Davey, he posed as a removal van driver as he gained the trust of animal rights activists. Jessica said he became her first proper boyfriend in 1992 when she had just left home and was a ‘naive, idealistic, unsophisticated and a very young 19’.
Mr Coles became a regular visitor to the house she shared with other activists and first kissed her as they watched a film together. She claims she didn’t know how to react and ‘did not want to hurt his feelings’. She said: ‘I feel my youth and vulnerability were used to target me. I was groomed by someone much older and far more experienced and I was manipulated into having a sexual relationship with him.’ For nine months of their time together it was a long-distance relationship because she was working abroad. Mr Coles returned to working as a detective at Scotland Yard after four years but told contacts in the animal rights world he was moving abroad.
The father of three grown-up daughters retired from the force in 2012. He became a councillor in Peterborough, where he lives with his current wife Louise, before taking the post of deputy police and crime commissioner last year. Jessica claims she has suffered ‘severe shock and distress’ after learning the truth and called for her case to be added to a public inquiry being conducted by Lord Justice Pitchford into the conduct of officers who infiltrated political groups going back to 1968.
Rev Coles’ book referred to his brother infiltrating ‘ sinister organisations while his wife and baby daughter made do with unpredictable visits’. It described him as having ‘long and shaggy’ hair and ‘ears rattling with piercings’.
Mr Coles’ wife said yesterday that her husband would be making no comment, while Cambridgeshire commissioner Jason Ablewhite failed to respond to a request for a comment.
Eight women have received compensation from the Met over the scandal of police spies abusing their positions by starting intimate relationships with them. They include one known as Jacqui who discovered the man who abandoned her and her son 20 years ago was an officer called Bob Lambert who had pretended to be an animal rights activist.