UK police to pay £425k to victim of spy

UK’s Metropolitan Police are to pay £425,000 in compensation to a woman whose child was fathered by an undercover police officer.

The sum, announced on Thursday, was reached in an out-of-court settlement between the force and the mother, known by the name Jacqui, amid the police’s legal battle with over a dozen women who say they were deceived by officers sent to spy on them.

Jacqui said the compensation would not bring closure for her as the Metropolitan police have not admitted any wrongdoing.

Jacqui also criticized the force for delaying the legal proceedings by refusing to concede for two years that her child’s father, Bob Lambert, was an undercover officer, despite he himself having already confessed his covert role.

In addition, Jacqui said she was angry because so many questions about her life would remain unanswered amid the force’s refusal to give her an explanation.

“I live in a country that protects its establishment so much that someone like me is nothing to them – I am just like a little ant, and they are like a big elephant stamping on a little ant. I would like all the gaps of the last 30 years of my life filled in,” said Jacqui.

During an operation against animal rights and environmental groups in the mid 1980s, Lambert began a relationship with Jacqui, despite being already married with children. The couple’s child was born in 1985 and two years later Lambert abandoned both of them.

Jacqui first discovered by chance that Lambert was an undercover officer in June 2012 when she read about his covert work in a newspaper.

This is while the Metropolitan police are still resisting legal claims from more than 10 other women who have discovered that their one-time partners were undercover officers.

Police chiefs have maintained that undercover officers were not permitted to engage intimately with their targets; however, evidence has revealed that such sexual relationships were routine and often lasted a number of years.

CAH/NN/KA