Police spy had couples therapy to prolong his fake relationship

A POLICE spy went to couples counselling for 18 months in a bid to prolong his fake relationship with an activist before disappearing, The Daily Telegraph can reveal, ahead of the start of the public inquiry into undercover policing.

Mark Jenner, a former officer in the Met’s Special Demonstration Squad, went to therapy with his girlfriend of four years, Alison, who has legal anonymity, to discuss having children when tasked with spying on a Left-wing political organisation she was part of.

“These police operations infiltrated our most private lives,” Alison says in Bed of Lies, a new Telegraph podcast series. “And it wasn’t just us, but those of our families and close friends, too.”

Undercover police had intimate relationships with more than 30 women, including Alison, who will be sharing their stories with the inquiry from Monday. Nine of them have spoken to The Telegraph for its new podcast series.

It emerged yesterday that Mark Kennedy, an undercover officer from the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, who had sexual relationships with multiple activists, had pulled out of giving an opening statement at the inquiry.

“It is really disappointing that there isn’t going to be anything coming from him,” said Lisa, who was tricked into a six-year relationship with Kennedy.

“But I have to remind myself that every time he’s spoken in the public domain it’s been very self-serving.”

She added: “When the Met Police try to make out that he was a rogue officer, it’s so clearly wrong. There’s story after story after story of chillingly similar situations happening.”

Alison and Lisa are part of the Police Spies Out of Lives campaign group, which is pushing for full disclosure by the Met at the inquiry.

“We want to see the evidence of our lives tracked by the people we were in relationships with,” says Alison.

She was in a relationship with Mark Jenner, whom she knew as Mark Cassidy, for five years. Then one day he vanished from her life.

After years of searching, she found evidence that he was from the police. “My feelings didn’t change overnight from love to hate,” she says. “It went from love to utter confusion.”

At least three female undercover officers are known to have had relationships with men they were spying on.

Announced by Theresa May in 2015, the Undercover Policing Inquiry will investigate the work of the SDS and NPOIU, two secretive units that were set up to spy on Left-wing, environmental and animal rights groups.

Over a 40-year period, the units spied on more than 1,000 organisations, including trade unions and bereaved family justice campaigns.

is out on Nov 9.