Woman ‘trolled’ for 12 years by vengeful online date wins damages

A woman who was subjected to 12-year campaign of online harassment by a man she met on a dating website has won damages in a “landmark” ruling.

Lindsey Goldrick Dean met Paul Curran in late 2004 through The Guardian’s Soulmates online dating platform

The pair went on several dates, before Dean decided she no longer wished to see Curran and broke off the relationship in February 2005.

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Almost at once, Curran “started to harass her by creating dozens of websites with her name and publishing false or private information about her”, The Times reports.

He taunted Dean, her family and friends with phone calls and emails containing links to the fake websites, created a string of social media accounts in her name, and even “bought Google advertising with her name so that anyone searching for her name would visit his websites”.

Despite several complaints to the police, the “trolling” campaign continued well into 2017 - more than 12 years after their relationship ended.

The harassment only ended in August 2017, when Dean began legal proceedings against her tormentor, ITV News reports.

Gervase de Wilde, representing Dean, told the High Court in London yesterday that Curran’s vendetta amounted to “civil harassment” and had caused his client “enormous anxiety, mental distress and embarrassment”.

Curran, who is the director of a consultancy firm, has now agreed to pay Dean an undisclosed sum of damages and to cover her legal expenses.

In a written statement to the court that “he did not dispute ‘the majority’ of allegations”, the BBC reports.

“I am ashamed of my past behaviour and disappointed by my lack of judgement over a period of time,” Curran wrote, apologising to Dean for the “considerable upset” he had caused.

As part of the settlement, he agreed to a court order barring him from engaging in any further harassment.

Dean’s solicitor, Yair Cohen, told the Law Gazette that the case was one of the longest-running of its type in UK legal history and “a landmark example of both misuse of private information and harassment”.

Speaking after the hearing, Dean said she was “so glad it’s all over”, and urged other victims of online harassment to seek justice.

“I hope to give hope to other people because there is help out there,” she said.