{"id":5544,"date":"2022-01-18T05:05:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-18T05:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5544"},"modified":"2022-01-21T17:09:51","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T17:09:51","slug":"how-a-married-undercover-cop-having-sex-with-activists-killed-a-climate-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/archives\/5544","title":{"rendered":"How a Married Undercover Cop Having Sex With Activists Killed a Climate Movement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mark Kennedy spent seven years pretending to be a climate activist. People he deceived are still rebuilding their lives<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

hen Kate Wilson was 23, she got deceived into having sex with an older guy who wasn\u2019t what he appeared to be. To her, he was Mark Stone, a radical environmental activist who shared her taste in country music and her belief that capitalism is destroying the planet. He wrote poetry for her, went to her grandmother\u2019s 90th birthday party, and helped her organize a massive protest against the G-8 summit in Scotland. They lived together nearly two years as lovers and stayed close friends for years after.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But seven years after they first met, in 2010, their intimate relationship imploded when Wilson learned the shocking truth about Stone\u2019s true identity. Not only was his real last name \u201cKennedy.\u201d Not only did he have a wife and two kids. But the person with whom<\/a> Wilson had \u201cshared many of my interests and dreams,\u201d who told her <\/a>\u201clots of his most intimate stories and secrets,\u201d was actually working for the British state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2003, Kennedy had been sent undercover by an elite unit in London\u2019s Metropolitan Police Service to gather intelligence on activists like Wilson. He spent seven years living a double life: He was a fearless organizer who had a shadowy backstory as a cocaine runner, but he was also a cop with a family in Ireland. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until the day he was \u201couted\u201d by a small group of sleuthing activists, Kennedy was a trusted leader in a movement that was desperately trying to wake up Britain and the world to the impending horrors of the climate emergency. But his friends, comrades, and\u00a0at least 10 other women<\/a>\u00a0he had sex with had no idea Kennedy was selling them out to governments and corporations that had a vested interest in keeping the country hooked on fossil fuels.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This wasn\u2019t just a personal betrayal. \u201cHe was controlling people\u2019s ability to organize politically,\u201d Wilson told VICE World News. \u201cThat is profoundly anti-democratic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 20 years after Kennedy first met Wilson and manipulated his way into her bedroom, the legal consequences are still unfolding. A judicial authority known as the Investigatory Powers Tribunal made a damning decision about Kennedy last September. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court ruled that Kennedy \u201cdebased, degraded, and humiliated\u201d Wilson. He \u201cinvaded the core of her private life\u201d and \u201ccaused her mental suffering.\u201d He \u201cinterfered\u201d with her \u201csexual autonomy\u201d and showed \u201ca profound lack of respect\u201d for her \u201cbodily integrity and human dignity.\u201d It was an \u201cabuse of the highest order.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Investigatory Powers Tribunal concluded, \u201cThis is not just a case about a renegade police officer, who took advantage of his undercover deployment to indulge his sexual proclivities.\u201d It described \u201cdisturbing and lamentable failings at the most fundamental levels.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruling stated that the UK\u2019s largest police force had adopted a \u201cdon\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell\u201d policy toward Kennedy having sex while undercover, \u201cor more probably a lack of interest in protecting women.\u201d It said activists such as Wilson never should have been targeted for their political beliefs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Metropolitan Police isn\u2019t disputing the judgment. \u201cWe accept and recognise the gravity of all of the breaches of Ms. Wilson\u2019s human rights as found by the tribunal,\u201d it says in a statement provided to VICE World News. \u201c[We] unreservedly apologise to Ms. Wilson for the damage caused, and the hurt she has suffered from the deployment of these undercover officers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wilson had previously said<\/a> that learning about Kennedy\u2019s true identity \u201cwas like a computer virus. It\u2019s corrupted all my memories of those times, and it affects all the relationships that I\u2019ve had since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SENIOR OFFICERS KNEW ABOUT OR TOLERATED KENNEDY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH WILSON, THE TRIBUNAL FOUND. PHOTO: KATE WILSON<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The court decision this fall, which was major news<\/a> across much of Europe but barely noticed in the U.S. and Canada, was the result of a 10-year legal battle by Wilson. \u201cIn terms of emotional closure, it\u2019s all quite complicated,\u201d she said. \u201cIn the end, the judgment was a much bigger victory than I expected it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ruling was a vindication for dozens of other women<\/a> who have come forward across the UK saying they also were deceived into sexual relationships with undercover officers. The tribunal will now be deciding what damages Wilson should receive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Kennedy caused harm that some of Wilson\u2019s friends and former activist colleagues say is not only personal, but actually planetary. They say that the dirty tricks he played, carried out on behalf of a police force\u00a0hostile to political dissent<\/a>, hobbled a climate movement whose goal was to prevent death and destruction from an overheated planet.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geoff Dembicki<\/a> Vice<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/epxbpj\/kate-wilson-mark-kennedy-undercover-cop-sex-with-activists<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mark Kennedy spent seven years pretending to be a climate activist. People he deceived are still rebuilding their lives hen Kate Wilson was 23, she got deceived into having sex with an older guy who wasn\u2019t what he appeared to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[245,977,388,833,95,410,382],"class_list":["post-5544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1","tag-action","tag-direct","tag-environmental","tag-kennedy","tag-police","tag-spycops","tag-undercover"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5544"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5545,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5544\/revisions\/5545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanlodge.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}