Woman Has Been in Years-Long Relationship with Undercover Cop Sent to Spy on Her – ‘It Felt like an Explosion'

Mark Kennedy is a police officer who went undercover as an environmental activist. But during his deployment, he dated several women, including one whom he had a six-year relationship with. After finding out he was an undercover policeman, the woman was distraught.

A police officer, named Mark Kennedy went undercover as an environmental activist. But during his double life, he went with the name Mark Stone. He was reported to have perfectly fit in with his long hair, tattoos, and piercings.

Kennedy's undercover mission began in 2003. He would spy on a group of environmental activists and pass on their secrets to his police superiors and MI5. His undercover work, however, crossed lines that many argue should never have been approached.

Kennedy reportedly had intimate relationships with up to 10 women during his time as an undercover, a revelation that raised profound ethical questions about the lengths to which law enforcement should go in their surveillance operations.

The case took a dramatic turn when a woman with the pseudo-name Lisa revealed that she had been in a relationship with Kennedy for six years. She was in love with him, and they fell for each other after they discovered they shared a love for climbing and exploring the great outdoors. Lisa discovered his true identity when they were on vacation in the Alps.

She found a passport and opened it hoping to have a good laugh at his passport photo but she was shocked when the name read Mark Kennedy and not Mark Stone. She could not believe her eyes, but she was mostly shocked at the idea that she possibly did not know the man she had been with for six years.

In addition to the passport, she found a phone, which was about to die. But she discovered messages from children calling him "dad," and her world shattered. It was impossible to imagine that she had been with him for so long but never knew he had children.

When they eventually went home, and Kennedy returned to work she finally had the time to do some digging. Fortunately, at the time, Lisa had a friend who was doing some ancestry work, so she gave the friend the name Mark Stone and found nothing.

However, his real name showed the birth certificates of his two children and his occupation was listed as a police officer. Lisa thought he was a Rope Access Technician just as he had said to her so this new information was a shock. “Finding out he was a police officer turned my whole identity upside down. It felt like an explosion had gone off - nothing had been the same since. It rips the bottom out of your world.” she said.

But Lisa was not the only one to have been heartbroken by Kennedy. Kate Wilson, another of Kennedy's partners, won a human rights case against the Met police, arguing that engaging in sexual relationships while on an undercover operation was unethical. The Investigatory Powers Tribunal ruled in her favor underscoring the violation of her privacy.

Met and the National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC) paid about $279,000 to Wilson. They found that Kennedy’s actions were an "abuse of the highest order" and a great humiliation to Wilson. The tribunal also admitted that there was not enough training done to encompass the risks of having male undercover officers within female groups.

The BBC podcast "Undercover: The Spycops" delves deeper into the tangled web of relationships, betrayals, and Kennedy's life during his deployment. While Wilson might have fought for justice, there are still many women out there who have been fighting for the truth to be revealed and for justice to prevail for over a decade.

Another woman who had a brief relationship with Kennedy, Eleanor Fairbraida, confessed that she was ashamed at first to have been taken advantage of in such a way. It took a while to get over it. “This shouldn’t happen in a functional democracy - the government sending in spies to infiltrate activists' lives.” she expressed.

As the public inquiry continues Kennedy's testimony is still pending, but in 2011, he reasoned that he was just doing his job. “I was lying because it was my job to lie. I'm not a dishonest person. I had to tell lies about who Mark Stone was and where he was from for it to be real,” he reiterated.

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