A woman has been “absolutely ruined” after discovering by chance that the father of her son was an undercover police officer, more than two decades after their child was born, a public inquiry has heard.
The woman, known as Jacqui, described how the undercover officer, Bob Lambert, fathered their son and then vanished two years after his birth, claiming to be on the run from the police.
She told the undercover policing inquiry that Lambert had told her lie after lie, leaving her to uncover the truth by accident when she read an article about him in the media.
She has been deeply traumatised and has undergone hours of therapy. She said she had become reclusive, adding: “Everything about my life has just been absolutely ruined … I don’t really have a life any more.”
Jacqui gave evidence on Thursday about Lambert, a central figure in the spy cops scandal.
He was part of a secret Scotland Yard squad that spied on political activists. Between 1984 and 1989, he went undercover to infiltrate animal rights and anarchist campaigners.
During his deployment, he had sexual relationships with Jacqui and at least three other women without disclosing to them that he was a police spy and was married with two children.
He is also accused of carrying out an arson attack on a branch of Debenhams while pretending to campaign against the fur trade. He denies the claim.
In the 1990s, he became a senior manager in the squad at a time when its undercover officers deceived women into intimate relationships. Lambert was awarded a commendation for his undercover deployment and an MBE for his police work.
Lambert is due to be questioned next week by the inquiry. Sir John Mitting, a retired judge, is examining the conduct of about 139 undercover police officers who spied on tens of thousands of mainly leftwing activists between 1968 and 2010.
Jacqui told the inquiry that she found Lambert “captivating” when they met in 1984. She was a young animal rights campaigner at the time.
Shortly after starting their relationship, she told Lambert “on many occasions” that she very much wanted a baby. They were having unprotected sex, and Lambert never mentioned contraception, she said.
When she told him she was pregnant, he seemed to be happy, Jacqui said. She described how Lambert watched her give birth to their son in an “intimate experience” – one she did not know she was sharing with an undercover officer who had been deployed to spy on her and other animal rights activists.
Jacqui said the registration of their son’s birth was a “fiasco” as Lambert invented reasons to make sure that he was not named as the father on the birth certificate.
She described him as a “hands-on and devoted” father after their son was born, changing his nappies, bathing him and bringing him gifts. He contributed financially.
She said he “seemed distraught” when their relationship ended in 1987. She had become irritated with him as he was claiming to live an “off-grid” anti-capitalist lifestyle while she struggled financially.
The following year, Lambert told her and other activists that he had to flee to Spain as the police were on the verge of arresting him for committing crimes to further animal rights campaigns. This was a false story that enabled him to disappear at the end of his covert deployment without raising suspicions. He actually went to work at Scotland Yard.
For the next 24 years, he vanished from the lives of Jacqui and their son, and made no effort to contact them.
In 2012, she saw by chance a photograph of Lambert in the Daily Mail newspaper, identifying him as a former undercover officer. Within 24 hours, she tracked him down as he worked as an academic at St Andrews University.
