Helen Steel

Helen Steel is a core participant in the Undercover Policing Inquiry. She is one of several women who were deceived into long-term relationships with undercover police officers, but is one of only two who have spoken publicly about their ordeal while using their own name.[3]

Steel was a victim of the UK Spycops[4] scandal,[5] deceived into a long term relationship with police officer, John Dines,[6] (known to Steel as John Barker) who was working undercover, as part of a wider police operation, to gain information on campaigners involved in the organisation London Greenpeace.[7][8] Steel met Dines in the late 1980s,[9] and in 1990 began a relationship with him, which lasted 2 years.[10] They lived together, and had discussed starting a family together.[11] After 2 years Dines disappeared abroad, claiming to have had a breakdown. Steel has said she spent years searching for him, and it was during this time that she discovered he had been using a false identity (that of a dead child).[10] She tracked him down and confronted him in 2016, when he then apologised to her.[12]

Steel is one of seven women who were apologised to by the Metropolitan Police for their deception[13][14] and one of eight women to bring a legal action against the police for the abuses entailed by their undercover police operations.[15]