Sex, lies and police spies: The disputed story of the 'creepy' undercover officer

ByJon Ironmonger

East & London Investigations

Andrew Coles sings in a church choir, is active in local Conservative politics and was once an undercover Metropolitan Police officer – a so-called "spy cop".

Jessica – not her real name – is an animal rights activist who says he deceived her into sleeping with him.

This is a story about sex and lies. But who is telling the truth?

Coles, 66, lives in a thatched cottage in the Cambridgeshire countryside with his wife and their greyhound.

He is the brother of broadcaster the Reverend Richard Coles.

But between 1990 and 1995, he served in the Metropolitan Police Service's (MPS) undercover Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), which infiltrated political and protest groups.

For the past decade, its activities have been probed by the Undercover Policing Inquiry (UCPI), external.

"The MPS has accepted that Andrew Coles had a sexual relationship with Jessica," wrote the force's commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, "and is disappointed he did not tell the truth to the inquiry."

Coles is also accused of appearing to advise colleagues to have similar relationships.

He vehemently denies the claims against him, insisting he is the victim of a deceit.

"It's payback, pure and simple," he says.

Sex, Lies & Spies

For decades, undercover police infiltrated protest groups to gather intelligence. Some deceived women activists into sexual relationships.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, Coles lists resilience, bravery and ruthlessness as the qualities needed in a good undercover police officer.

A skill for deception?

"I suppose so," he says. "Though I didn't behave very differently to my own personality."

Coles's current life is a far cry from his covert past when, he says, he sometimes had to break the law to gain trust and maintain his cover.

"I took drugs – cannabis. It was necessary – you had to be vouched for," he says.

"I was given a lemon squeezy bottle, allegedly full of acid, and squirted it over a butcher's shop window.

"I was also involved in a raid on a chicken farm when some chickens were stolen and damage was done to the property."

The SDS had already existed for more than 20 years when Coles, then a constable in the Met, received a tap on the shoulder.

Taking the name Andy Davey from a dead child, he began making connections with the Animal Liberation Front, an extremist direct-action group.

"The work was certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but I protected a part of society from some very dangerous people, and I think I did a good job," he says.

In 1991, Jessica met Davey for the first time.

She was a naïve 19-year-old, she recalls, living in a shared east London terrace and looking for adventure.

Jessica, now 54, remembers Davey as an awkward older man who drove a van, which endeared him to her close circle of like-minded activists.

"Late in the evenings he would come to the house and we struggled to get rid of him," she says.

"Then one night, without warning, he went to kiss me. I didn't have the confidence to get out of the situation and he became my first proper boyfriend."

But he was not 24 as Jessica had thought. He was 32, married and had children.

Nor was he a fellow hunt saboteur. He was secretly gathering intelligence as part of a criminal inquiry into the ALF after several members were convicted of arson and bombing offences.

"He groomed me," she says. "He would sleep in my single bed several times a week, and I didn't know who he really was.

"It's difficult to describe it as rape, but he knew that having sex with me would have been against my consent."

Coles has admitted sharing Jessica's bed on one occasion but says there was never any sexual contact.

"Her story is not true, absolutely not true," he insists. When pressed about the weight of evidence, he concedes: "It is very hard to defeat."

That evidence includes two handwritten letters that Jessica, then staying in France, wrote to her best friend in 1993.

In the first, she writes: "It's really weird, but I'm still going out with Andy."

And in the second: "[Andy] suggested that we see other people because if I decided to stay here for another year... he wouldn't be getting enough sex."

Coles has a theory about the provenance of these letters.

"So, the first could have been written at the time. The second, what it talks about is absolute nonsense. I think it was written much later and added to the evidence bundle," he says.

"The handwriting is nothing like her handwriting in the original letter, which is almost a childlike scrawl. The second one is an elegant, joined-up cursive."

Jessica has shown the BBC more letters from the same period, written in noticeably different hands.

"If I write slowly, I can make it neat, but if I'm writing in a hurry or I'm angry, it's completely different," she says.

"The letters themselves are really embarrassing, and if I was to make something up it wouldn't have all that excruciatingly awful stuff in it."

Forensic graphologist Kate Barr told the BBC Jessica's handwriting "appeared to vary" and it was possible she had written both letters at around the same time.

Launched by Theresa May in 2015, the UCPI is examining claims officers deceived women into sexual relationships, spied on the family of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, took the names of dead children and infiltrated groups without justification.

Giving evidence in 2024, Coles was quizzed about references in his intelligence reports to the "good looks" of female activists.

"Was the sexual attractiveness of the women you were mixing with on your mind?" he was asked.

"No, not for me," Coles replied, "but it was certainly a matter of... note".

Coles was then questioned about the accounts of various witnesses, many of whom did not know Jessica, who described him as a "sex pest", a "creep" and a "lech".

Some alleged he pursued women and sought unwanted sexual encounters.

Three people reported seeing him behaving intimately with Jessica in his van or emerging from her bedroom in only his boxer shorts.

Coles says their stories are "completely made-up".

"It's hardly surprising they'd want to get their own back on me," he adds.

Coles was unexpectedly exposed by his famous brother, who wrote in his 2014 autobiography: "My older brother Andy brought his own drama with him.

"He had joined Special Branch and was undercover, living a double life, infiltrated into some sinister organisation while his wife and baby daughter made do with unpredictable visits."

Coles was confirmed to be Andy Davey, or operative HN2, at the UCPI in 2018.

Does he regret his brother writing those words?

"It would have been easier had he not, but I hold no ill will; he's my brother and I love him deeply, so it is not an issue for me," Coles says.

The revelation was harder for Jessica, then in the process of setting up a business and art studio.

"My whole world came to a crashing halt," she says.

"They created this person, and they deployed him into my life, and my bed. It's a massive violation. It was like being raped by the state.

"He was spying on my parents, my friends. And for what? I was a hunt saboteur. I don't have a criminal record... and all these officers were just looking at people for rescuing chickens."

After leaving the Met in 2012, Coles served on Peterborough City Council and as deputy police and crime commissioner for Cambridgeshire.

But after his unmasking, the backlash was relentless.

Jessica and her supporters mounted a campaign against him, labelling him an abuser of women and protesting at council meetings.

Coles says: "They met with the leader of the council; they've written to charities I'm involved with, saying 'Do not trust this man'; they've produced leaflets.

"It's exhausting and there is always the threat of more violence."

Coles, a former president of Peterborough Conservative Association, lost his council seat in 2024 and has twice stood unsuccessfully for re-election.

Jessica says: "He should not be in a position of power. He was in a position of power when I had a relationship with him, and he abused that power in the worst possible way."

Is she acting out of a vendetta?

"No, it's because people need to know, and I don't want him to do it to anyone else."

In 2019 Coles confronted Jessica on a Peterborough housing estate.

"I turned around and he was about 10ft away from me and my colleague with his camera in my face, filming us and saying, 'You're going to jail,'" she says.

"It's the closest he'd been to me for 30 years and I just wanted to get away."

Coles admits he "snatched a few leaflets" out of a person's hand.

"My concern was they were distributing material to influence the outcome of the election," he says.

"They then made an allegation of theft and injury, and I was investigated by the police at the time, but nothing came of it."

In 2017, the Met investigated Coles's alleged relationship with Jessica.

No criminal charges were brought but he was told he would have faced a gross misconduct hearing had he not already left the force.

The campaign group Police Spies Out of Lives says undercover officers deceived more than 60 women into sexual relationships.

Jessica and eight other women have received formal apologies and a share of millions of pounds in compensation.

Some of those officers were informed by a special guidebook, the Tradecraft Manual, authored by Coles in 1995.

Under the heading 'Sexual Liaisons' he wrote: "If you have no other option but to become involved with a weary [a term he used for activists], you should try to have fleeting, disastrous relationships."

Was Coles encouraging officers to have sex with the people they were spying on?

"No, I was talking about relationships; if someone takes an interest in you and it becomes more than just a friendship, you can do something to break it," he says.

Yet the section is headed "Sexual Liaisons".

"I know, and it surprised me when I saw that because I don't think I wrote it," he adds.

Nonetheless, officers advised by Coles later had long-running sexual relationships with activists. Does he feel partly responsible?

"If I was responsible for their management, then absolutely, but I was only training them in the concepts," he says.

Jessica, who now lives in the south of England and fosters guinea pigs when not campaigning, says she will always be affected by her relationship with Coles.

"I feel like it's an attack on my honesty. I have to keep fighting. You know we all do, because it shouldn't happen to anyone else."

Does Jessica ever enter Coles's thoughts?

"I don't think of her. That's my deep and distant past. It has no relevance today," he says.

The UCPI is years behind schedule and still has no end date.

Next year, its outgoing chair, Sir John Mitting, is expected to rule on whether Coles or Jessica is telling the truth.

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