When Lindsey Goldrick Dean decided to dip her toe in the dating game she had fairly modest expectations.
Then aged 34, she was hoping less for Mr Right than Mr Right-For-Now. ‘I just wanted to meet someone like-minded,’ she recalls.
And at first it seemed she had done just that: when a businessman called Paul Curran responded to the advert she had placed on an online dating site in October 2004, he seemed every inch the articulate, cultured partner she had hoped for.
As the weeks unfolded the couple embarked on a lively email correspondence revolving around travel, music and family.
Lindsey Goldrick Dean, 48, has been awarded damages in a landmark high court case against her stalker of 14-years, Paul Curran, now 51
When they met, however, the chemistry simply wasn’t there for Lindsey. After less than a handful of dates she gently called an end to the fledgling romance. That, she thought, would be that.
Little could she have known that it was instead to be the start of a horrific 14-year nightmare which finally ended in the High Court last month.
For in the months and years that followed, Curran, 51, ran an extensive campaign of online harassment and intimidation that would leave Lindsey, now 48, an isolated wreck in fear of her life.
In what is believed to be one of the longest-running cases of internet trolling in the UK, Curran set up dozens of websites in Lindsey’s name, filling them with crude sexual content and abusive language before sending emails and letters to her friends and family, directing them to view them.
He set up fake social media accounts in her name and even bought Google advertising so anyone searching for her name would find his sites.
An arrest and caution from the police did nothing to stop him. Indeed with Curran, who runs a technical consultancy firm, spending most of his time abroad, it seemed the authorities were powerless to do anything.
Only when an exhausted and embattled Lindsey was given free legal representation two years ago was she finally able to take her tormentor to the civil court.
After less than a handful of dates she gently called an end to the fledgling romance In the months and years that followed, Curran ran an extensive campaign of online harassment and intimidation
Last month, in a landmark case, her suit for harassment and misuse of private information reached the High Court, where she was awarded damages.
The sum — she prefers not to say how much — is substantially less than the £57,000 payment offered to her by Curran, which she refused, in the preceding months on the proviso that she kept his name out of the public domain.
‘I was willing to risk bankruptcy to be out of his control,’ she says. ‘He could have offered me a million pounds and I would still have said no. It was the principle.
‘I refused to be silenced as otherwise all those years of fear would be in vain. It was never about money for me but about exposing the way he dismantled my life. The woman Curran met all those years ago was so vibrant and full of ambition but for years he left me anxious, watchful and fearful.
‘He hijacked my privacy, my energy and my confidence and the lengths he went to do so were simply extraordinary. There were times when I thought I would never be free of him. I felt helpless.’
Indeed, the legacy of Curran’s obsession still lingers. Although Lindsey, a warm and charismatic woman, is now happily married to aircraft engineer Steven, 45, with whom she has a nine-year-old son, her emotions are never far from the surface.
Their homely cottage near Yeovil, Somerset, with reinforced locks on the doors, is testament to her troubled past.
Lindsey, pictured around 2004, the same year Curran started his persistent trolling
‘I honestly didn’t know how it would end,’ she says quietly. ‘I felt like whatever he was doing wouldn’t be enough. It didn’t feel too much of an exaggeration to think that he might try to kill me.’
Born in Stockport and youngest of three, Lindsey’s close-knit family moved to Yeovil when she was 17. From there she moved to America, working first as an au pair, then for a film production company.
The death of her father brought her back to the UK in 2003 aged 33. ‘I am very close to Mum — and I couldn’t bear the thought of her being on her own,’ she recalls.
It was in the wake of her return that, together with a friend, she decided to place an advert on a national newspaper dating website in the summer of 2004.
Paul Curran was one of those who got in touch and initially seemed an attractive proposition.
‘He worked in Saudi Arabia as a technical writer but he seemed fun and I enjoyed our emails,’ she said. ‘It was nice to correspond with someone who seemed fun and thoughtful.’
Their first meeting, over drinks and dinner in Oxford when Curran was home for a few weeks, was less auspicious.
‘He was tall and thin and I wasn’t really attracted to him but I reminded myself that we’d had a real rapport up to now,’ she recalls.
‘I wanted to give things a chance although looking back there were warning bells. He was socially awkward and he didn’t seem to have many friends.’
Three more meetings followed — lunch with Curran’s parents at their home in Sussex, and another dinner date before an attempted mini-break in the New Forest for Valentine’s weekend in 2005. It was a disaster.
Lindsey said ‘he hijacked my privacy, my energy and my confidence and the lengths he went to do so were simply extraordinary. There were times when I thought I would never be free of him.’
‘He was mumbling, I had a sinus infection and couldn’t hear him, but when I told him so he lost his temper and got quite nasty,’ Lindsey recalls. ‘Suddenly I couldn’t wait to get out of there. I told him I was sorry, it wasn’t working and I left.’
Days later, she received an aggressive email accusing her of heartlessness for failing to buy him a Valentine’s card. ‘I sent a polite email back saying we had run our course and he needed to move on.’
Another email followed, requesting the return of a piece of lingerie he had sent Lindsey — a ‘creepy babydoll nightdress’ she had refused to wear — followed by a package sent to her mother’s house containing ashes, a burnt CD and a note which again requested the return of the nightdress.
‘Nothing would have happened if you had sent me a Valentine’s card,’ the note added. ‘Send the lingerie back or I will come to your mother’s house and we know you won’t like that.’
‘It was very threatening and I was starting to feel frightened,’ says Lindsey. ‘He seemed unhinged but I told myself this was just a blip and he would quickly get bored.’
In fact it was only the start. Phone calls followed, at all times of day and night, sometimes five or six at a time.
‘If he had blocked his number so it didn’t flash up on my mobile and I picked up he would be screaming down the phone. My nerves were shredded,’ she says.
In despair Lindsey even called Curran’s doctor father and begged him to intervene. ‘I told him his son was scaring me but he said very little in return.’
It made no difference. Shortly afterwards, Curran rang her so incessantly during the course of one day that a fraught Lindsey contacted Avon and Somerset police.
‘They didn’t seem to know what to do,’ she says. ‘They suggested I change my number but said they would refer it to Sussex police as that was where he lived with his parents when he was in the UK.’
No further action was taken, with Lindsey clinging instead to the hope that Curran would tire of his campaign.
Instead, he stepped it up: in September, family and friends received emails urging them to view a website set up in Lindsey’s name. ‘Most of them thought I had set up a business so they were all excited for me,’ she says wryly.
Instead, the 53-page site was filled with photographs of Lindsey and heavily embellished versions of their email exchanges loaded with crude and explicit sexual content.
‘When I discovered what he was doing it made me feel sick to the stomach. In one part he had written in massive letters ‘even your mum knows how nasty you are’. We are so close that that upset me more than anything.’
Chillingly, Curran had also posted pictures of tissues Lindsey had used to blot lipstick and strands of hair from her hairbrush.
Lindsey’s ordeal started with an aggressive email accusing her of heartlessness for failing to buy Curran a Valentine’s card
‘He could only have obtained them during the brief time we were together. It was as if he had been planning ahead,’ she recalls. The site would prove to be the first of many.
Over the coming years Curran bought up endless domain names in almost every permutation of Lindsey’s name, loading them with crude and vicious content. He also used web-building skills to ensure the sites were prominent when her name was searched for online.
Horrified, Lindsey turned to Sussex police who cautioned Curran for harassment. ‘It obviously had no effect whatsoever as I now know that immediately afterwards he set up three more websites,’ she says. He also returned to Saudi Arabia, taking himself out of UK jurisdiction.
‘The police tried their best but I had mixed messages. Avon and Somerset police said there was nothing they could do unless he physically harmed me, while Sussex police said they would arrest him for harassment if he returned to the country — but they weren’t able to keep tabs on him.’
Internet companies were also of limited use. ‘I contacted Google, asking for the sites to be taken down and they would, but then the sites would appear again,’ Lindsey says.
There was one bright note. By the end of 2005, Lindsey had found love the old-fashioned way, introduced to Steven by a mutual friend. ‘I was very cautious as this was unfolding against a backdrop of Curran’s harassment but Steven was so gentle and understanding,’ she recalls.
The couple married in 2007 and their son was born two years later. ‘In many ways my son was my saviour. I had to be strong for him. But it was hard — and for Steven too, who desperately wanted to protect me but felt helpless.’
Mrs Dean (pictured outside the High Court) will receive damages for years of enormous anxiety, mental distress and embarrassment
With Steven’s work taking him abroad for days at a time, Lindsey felt vulnerable. ‘I’d put my son to bed then spend the evening looking at the internet to see what he had done this time.
‘Then I would go to bed and lie awake with my heart pounding at any little noise. I felt tormented by him.’
Curran did not stop: over ensuing years he set up at least 15 separate websites — although Lindsey believes there were many more — and bought Google advertising so anyone searching for her name would be sent to them.
‘The biggest irony of all was that I had always been so private. I never had a Facebook account and I never shared any information online — yet he was able to find out what I was up to and was updating the websites accordingly so that if you typed my married name into a search engine his sites would come up,’ she says.
‘At one point if you typed my name into a search engine there were three pages full of false content created by him.’ By 2016 and with no meaningful help on hand from the police or the criminal justice system, Lindsey was in the depths of despair.
‘One day after trawling the internet for help I found a lawyer called Yair Cohen who specialised in internet issues.
‘He told me we could bring a civil case but the costs were prohibitive. He suggested I get in touch with the Pro Bono Unit, a charity that takes on some cases on a pro bono basis although I didn’t hold out much hope.’
For once luck was on her side: by October she was contacted by barrister Gabor Bognar who said he was prepared to act for her on a Pro Bono basis alongside Yair Cohen. ‘I remember sitting down and weeping after I had taken the call,’ Lindsey recalls. ‘Suddenly I had an amazing legal team. I felt I had some hope.’
In December 2016 her lawyers filed a civil suit against Curran for Harassment, Tort of Misuse of Private Information and Breach of Confidence. His response was an email in which he replied simply: ‘I deny all of this.’
Lindsey also knows that around the same time he re-registered some of her domain names until 2020. ‘He thought he was invincible,’ she says.
Curran set up at least 15 separate websites — although Lindsey believes there were many more — and bought Google advertising so anyone searching for her name would be sent to them
The legal wheels continued to turn throughout 2017, towards the end of which Curran’s solicitors made an offer to Lindsey: he would pay her £57,000 compensation but in return she — or anyone who knew her — could not discuss the case or he himself could bring legal action against her.
‘It was a huge amount of money but no amount would be enough to buy my silence. The thought of still being under his control in some way made me feel sick,’ she says. ‘I also wanted to set a precedent in law to help others.’
Declining the offer came with huge risk however — if any damages subsequently awarded were less than his offer it meant Lindsey could be liable for his costs from the point at which he made it. ‘It was a risk I felt I had to take to get justice and Steven agreed,’ she says.
In the event, her lawyers negotiated a counter-settlement from Curran in which he paid Lindsey a lesser five-figure sum in compensation but which left her free to expose his actions. He declined her request to issue a public apology.
The settlement was announced before a High Court judge, together with a witness statement from Curran — who has now excised all traces of himself from the internet but who is understood to be married and living in Germany — in which he said he was ‘ashamed of my past behaviour.’
It’s a meaningless sentiment as far as Lindsey is concerned.
‘He has taken so much from me and I can never really forgive him for that. He stole a quarter of my life, but I wanted to show he hadn’t broken me,’ she says.
‘For the first time in a long time I feel free and full of excitement about the future.’