United Kingdom

A “creepy” undercover police officer in his 30s formed a sexual relationship with a teenage activist without disclosing his true identity to her, a public inquiry has been told.

The activist, known as Jessica, said the deception by Andy Coles, the undercover officer, was “disgusting and gross”.

She said she was a “quite young and naive 19” when she started a relationship with Coles, who was 31 at the time. It was her first relationship.

She told the undercover policing inquiry that he was a “creepy lech”. She discovered that he was an undercover officer only when he was exposed in 2017 after a throwaway remark by his brother, the broadcaster and former pop star Richard Coles.

Richard Coles had made a brief reference in his autobiography to his brother’s past work as an undercover police officer. This enabled activists to piece together Andy Coles’s deployment infiltrating animal rights groups in the 1990s. He went on to become a Conservative councillor after he left the police.

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Andy Coles, who is due to be questioned by the inquiry this week, denies that he had a relationship with Jessica. However, the Metropolitan police, his former employer, has told the inquiry that Coles had an intimate relationship with her in 1992 and 1993 and does not accept his denial. The Met has previously said Coles would have faced a disciplinary hearing on a charge of gross misconduct if he had not already retired from the police in 2013.