‘When I reported I had been raped by my best friend’s husband, I didn’t realise he had also been my stalker’

Paula Doyle had no idea vile ‘pest messages’ she’d been receiving for years were from the same man

Paula Doyle’s phone was vibrating so incessantly that the detective suggested putting it in another room. The devoted mother of five, who had been raped by her best friend’s husband just days before, was in the living room of her home in Dublin, giving a detailed and emotional statement about the attack.

As she spoke, an officer took down the harrowing details of what Aidan Kestell did to her while he walked her home from a family party. At the same time, message after message was coming in to her mobile.

“The detective asked if I wanted to put it in a bedroom,” Ms Doyle told the Herald this week. “She asked if I wanted to check the messages first, but I said, ‘No’. I know what it probably is.’

“I told her I had been getting these pest messages for the past number of years. I didn’t want to go into it because it was nothing to do with the rape.”

The detective asked her whether the messages were bad. Some of them were vile, she replied.

She had blocked the number and didn’t look at them, but her partner would check the phone every now and then.

There were videos and photos of a graphic and sexual nature.

“Do you mind if take your phone?” the detective asked.

Ms Doyle agreed and gave her the code to unlock it. They continued with the statement. Less than a minute later, the detective stopped the interview.

“She said to me, ‘Do you mind me asking – the perpetrator of the rape, what’s his address?’ I gave her Aidan Kestell’s home address,” she said.

“She showed the guard the phone first and then she said: ‘Paula, I’m sorry.’ She had the phone in her hand and more messages were coming in. There was a little red dot beeping to say the location of the person. It was him.”

Paula Doyle, the old Paula that is, was a bubbly, outgoing, stay-at-home mum.

Together with her partner Derek, she lived in Hartstown in Dublin with her children – two girls and three boys, ranging in age from four to 21. The family home was a bustling, vibrant place.

“We were lucky enough to have a playroom. So our house became the go-to place for the kids and all their friends to come to,” she said.

“We had the garden and the trampoline, so we always knew where they were.”

Ms Doyle was very active in the community, running the local youth club and helping with prayer groups in the church. She was on the parents association of the local school as well as the board of management.

Life, with all the madness of bringing up five children, was exactly as she wanted it.

“I was a very happy person,” she said. She also had two very good friends who lived nearby. One of them, her best friend, was Aidan Kestell’s wife. “We were more like sisters,” she said. “She had three kids and I have five

and the eight of them grew up together really.

“We had birthday parties, communions, trick-or-treating at Halloween, Santa visits at Christmas. We were very connected to each other’s lives.”

Aidan Kestell (55), a porter at the Mater Hospital, had been having ongoing marriage difficulties. A number of years before, Ms Doyle had, after much deliberation, confronted her friend about his behaviour.

“Unfortunately, I had to tell her some news, which I had been told, which wasn’t very nice about her husband,” she said.

Against this fractious backdrop, the friendship between the two women continued.

On September 6, 2019, the Kestells hosted a party in their home to celebrate a birthday and a debs. Ms Doyle made sandwiches for the event. There was a gazebo in the garden, balloons and banners, bubbles and a cake. Kestell was there, but she avoided him. During the party, he had walked in on her when she was in the bathroom, which she found a bit strange.

When she was leaving to walk the short distance home, her friend insisted Kestell should walk her home.

She said she was reluctant but eventually agreed.

“He started begging me to help him fix things with his wife and family,” she said.

“I felt I had kept my mouth shut for six years. I felt that I had been on my best behaviour all night. I didn’t react or say anything about the bathroom incident, so I let him have it there and then.

“I shouted and screamed and I said: ‘You know what, you are a horrible individual. If you want to make changes, you are telling the wrong person.’” Again, Kestell begged for her help. “I just didn’t want to hear lies and more manipulation,” she said.

“I said: ‘Tell you what, why don’t you just crawl back under the rock you came from’.

“I had a spring in my step as I turned to walk away because I was happy that I finally got to say something that I held in. I hoped it was the wake-up call he needed.”

The next thing she remembers is lying on the ground in agony. She realised she was being raped, and she then tried to fight off her attacker, who she realised was Kestell.

After he left, she made her way home, arriving around 3am.

The day after the rape, her best friend arrived at her house. She brought flowers as a thank-you for all her help with the party.

“I couldn’t look at her,” she said. “I couldn’t look at my partner. I didn’t want to tell anyone. I knew it would destroy my life. I knew it could kill my best friend. I didn’t know what it would do to my family.

“I knew there were eight children involved in this and their lives could be destroyed. I thought, ‘You know what, bad things happen to people. Just put it in a box and bury it. You will be able to deal with this’.”

What happened could not be buried in a box. After confiding in a friend about the attack, Ms Doyle contacted a sexual assault treatment unit and made a complaint to gardaí.

The messages had started threeand-a half years before. Ms Doyle was walking home from a night out with the parents’ association when she got a text message from a number she did not know.

“It said: ‘Hi.. blah blah, You looked great tonight,’” she said.

“I rang and got no answer. I rang back straight away. I rang again. I left a voice message saying, ‘Thanks for the compliments but you are obviously a coward because you won’t answer the phone. Heading home to my partner and beautiful children. Thanks but no thanks.’”

The messages continued over the following few days.

“Seen you driving your car down the road. Now I know what car you drive… will be keeping an eye out for you,” one voicemail said.

“If I drive around, I have the reg of the car, I will know where your house is,” it added.

“My partner Derek would ring the number, but no answer. The voice message at the end of the number was a ‘Paul’.”

The messages continued over the next year. “No matter where I went, this person knew where I was,” she said.

“One night, myself and some friends were in a restaurant and I got a text that read: ‘Much prefer your hair down, will you take your hair down for me?’

“The three of us were like mad women, walking up and down where men were sitting with their wives, ringing to see if a phone would ring. No-one’s phone rang. I was unnerved at that point. I didn’t know how he was watching me.”

She went to the gardaí. She was told to block the number.

Changes to stalking and harassment legislation, which may have given her more protection, came into effect only last year.

“If I would block it, my phone would still vibrate with messages coming in,” she said. “It was relentless.”

She never suspected the person stalking and harassing her was Aidan Kestell.

“I had his wife ringing the number. She didn’t even recognise ‘Paul’.”

Kestell was found guilty of rape after a four-day trial at the Central Criminal Court last month and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years. For Paula, it marked the end of a torturous journey to court.

“You are left in the dark for so long. Then you get a summons served to the house. That’s how I found out my case was going ahead. That was June, 2021 and it said May 22, 2023 for trial.

“I thought… two years. I have to wait another two years. I can’t even live until tomorrow. How am I going to get through two years?”

Life at home was a living hell. Kestell still walked in the park where he carried out the rape, so she avoided it at all costs.

She stopped going to the local shop, attending her sons’ football games, or venturing out alone.

Paranoia made her a prisoner in her own home. Security cameras were installed, the blinds were kept down at all times and the open-door policy of the previous family home was gone.

Her children introduced “air hugs” because she couldn’t bear physical touch.

She made three attempts to take her own life. Separately, she began to selfharm. At one stage, she asked her GP for a blood transfusion because she still felt “infected” by Kestell.

In the meantime, she was undergoing intense counselling at the Rape Crisis Centre.

“My counselling notes were requested by the DPP in January last year,” she said.

“I had to sit and read through three years of what has been written about me to prepare.

“Not only are they seen by the DPP, and the prosecution, but they are seen by the defence and seen by him.

“He had taken enough from me – and I know he could [now] read personal, private, intimate thoughts. It made me feel sick.”

There are other aspects of the system that Paula feels need to change. In order to give evidence via video-link, which is not an automatic right for victims, she had to undergo a psychological assessment.

“During the trial, a defence barrister asked her what she was wearing on the night of the rape.

“When I was asked that, I was thinking to myself, ‘Well thank God I was covered up,’” she said.

“I was even trying to rationalise it with myself. I was wearing a long dress and I was covered up. I had a denim jacket on. Not only had I my own clothes on, but I had his wife’s dressing gown on.

“I was wearing her dressing gown, tied, when he did this but it shouldn’t matter what I was wearing.”

Even with Kestell behind bars, life is forever changed.

“I still look out for his car passing my house,” she said.

“In my head, I can’t tell myself it’s not him because he’s in the Midlands. I was living like this for so long that I am still trained to be alert.

“I still double-lock my door. I still get up three times at night to check the doors. I still sleep with two lamps on at night. I am a 51-year-old woman and I am afraid of the dark.”

Despite the ongoing trauma of what happened, the old Paula, the one who was so active in her community, is trying to make her way back.

“I want to start a change,” she said. “I would love it if in 10 years, you aren’t asked for counselling notes or you are not asked what you were wearing that night, or it won’t take four-and-a-half years to get to court.

“You can’t work on healing. You are focused on the trial. I am doing this to try and help the women coming after me because unfortunately, there are more and more coming.”

‘At one stage, Paula asked her GP to give her a blood transfusion because she still felt “infected” by Kestell’

If you have been affected by the issues raised in this article, contact the Rape Crisis Centre on Freephone 1800 77 88 88