UK undercover policing relationships scandal  Around the end of 2010 and during 2011, it was disclosed in UK media that a number of undercover police officers had, as part of their 'false persona', entered into intimate relationships with members of targeted groups and in some cases proposed marriage or fathered children with protesters who were unaware their partner was a police officer in a role as part of their official duties. Various legal actions followed, including eight women who took action against the Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), stating they were deceived into long-term intimate relationships by five officers, including Mark Kennedy, the first officer to be identified as such, who was publicly identified on 21 October 2010 as infiltrating social and environmental justice campaigns, and Mark Kennedy himself who claimed in turn that he had been incompetently handled by his superiors and denied psychological counselling. According to "The Guardian", Kennedy sued the police for ruining his life and failing to "protect" him from falling in love with one of the environmental activists whose movement he infiltrated. Although the units had been previously disbanded, other cases continued to emerge. In 2015 a public inquiry under a senior judge was announced. In November 2015 the Metropolitan Police published an unreserved apology in which it exonerated and apologised to those women who had been deceived and stated the methodology had constituted abuse and a "gross violation" with severely harmful effects, as part of a settlement of their cases. In 2016 new cases continued to come to light. Mark Kennedy (also known as Mark Stone and Flash) is a former London Metropolitan Police officer who, whilst attached to the police service's National Public Order Intelligence Unit, (NPOIU) infiltrated many protest groups between 2003 and 2010 before he was unmasked by political activists as an undercover policeman on 21 October 2010. In January 2011, it was reported that Kennedy worked for several years as an undercover infiltrator for the National Public Order Intelligence Unit with seven years work in the environmental protest movement. During this time he had entered into intimate relationships on false grounds, which came to light during 2010 as being part of a systemic pattern of exploitation and manipulation of women in such movements. It also emerged that some of these undercover police relationships had resulted in children whose fathers later "vanished" when their role was completed. It later emerged that Kennedy had previously undertaken criminal acts as part of his role for other countries, including Denmark where he stated that, in the guise of an environmental activist, he was used by the police forces of 22 countries and was responsible for the closing down of the Youth House community centre in Copenhagen, and in Germany, for German police, including arson.