Kishan Patel interviewed four young women at a care home owned by his parents, but went on to call them repeatedly with sexual explicit comments and threats
A care home manager bombarded young women with months of sexually explicit and threatening calls, after they attended job interviews.
Kishan Patel interviewed his four victims as potential candidates for roles within the sector before subjecting them to dozens of anonymous abusive phone calls in the early hours. He even threatened to break into the home of one of the unsuspecting applicants and rape her. Each was left baffled as to the identity of their stalker until he slipped up and revealed his true identity by forgetting to withhold his phone number.
Liverpool Crown Court was told that Daisy Hyland, Ellie Hughes, Mya Dazely and Talia Sullivan were aged between 18 and 22 when they applied for jobs at Colliers Croft Care Home in Haydock. The site was operated by Highpoint Care, a company owned by Patel’s parents. Ben Berkson, prosecuting, described how the 25-year-old interviewed them in his position as business development manager. But he then abused his access to their contact details in order to “persistently use phone calls to stalk and threaten sexual behaviour and sexual violence”, with many of his comments being too graphic to report.
Ms Hyland reported the calls to the police in the spring of last year after the defendant forgot to hide his number on one occasion. Data from her phone company subsequently showed he had contacted her using his work phone on 53 occasions between September 2023 and May 2024. In a statement read to the court on her behalf, Ms Hyland said: “I was confused, wondering if it was a prank. I overthought it. It became unhealthy. I was going over every person in my contacts, guessing who the person might be.
“How am I on their mind so much? This person woke up and obsessed about me, and I had no clue who it was. I stopped walking home from work just around the corner, constantly getting taxis from door to door. I was in constant fear of the unknown. I was so confused. I feel like I was being affected by something out of my control. My friends usually describe me as the most carefree and calm person. Now they describe me as being in my own little world.”
Ms Hughes was interviewed by Patel as long ago as September 2021, reports the Echo. She was first contacted by the unknown number during 2022, but initially ignored the calls. When she did answer the “constant and repeated” ringing, she would hear a man speaking in a “low voice” and similarly making sexualised comments, before “things escalated” during 2023.
On one occasion, Patel told her “Emily, I know where you are”. The calls increased to becoming weekly, with her stalker attempting to ring her up to 25 times when she refused to pick up. Records show that Ms Hughes had received 35 calls from him between September 2023 and May 2024. But after he again failed to withhold his number during the latter month, she was able to view his WhatsApp profile picture and identified the account holder as the man who had interviewed her nearly three years previously.
Patel later called her and claimed that his identity had been stolen and stated that he too had been receiving prank phone calls. Ms Dazely was subjected to weekly phone calls from July 2023 onwards, Patel having interviewed her for a job during the same month. In one, he told her that he “knew where she lived, would break into her house and rape her”.
Ms Dazely told the court in her statement: “Before this, I was a bubbly, outgoing girl in her early 20s. I feel like I’m talking about someone else from the past. I’m no longer that girl. I feel like I’ve aged 10 years due to the stress and worry. I remember feeling hopeful for the future when I secured the job interview at the care home. If only I’d known what was to come. I turned into a person I didn’t recognise. In her place was a quiet, introverted and paranoid person. I wanted to break down and scream or cry. I reached breaking point. I started having panic attacks. The thought of a possible rapist knowing where I lived burst the bubble I lived in.
“I think he wanted me to live in a constant state of fear. If that was his aim, he got exactly what he wanted. I felt like he would turn up when I least expected it and my family would never see me again. I was a very trusting person. That all changed when the harassment and stalking started. I want to be able to live my life free from threats of being raped. I don’t enjoy feeling paranoid in my own home. These feelings are solely due to what Mr Patel put me through.”
Ms Sullivan, whose older sister worked at the home alongside Patel, was interviewed by him for a job in October 2023 before beginning to receive calls from a withheld number during February 2024. She too would be woken by her phone ringing, with the caller also referencing the death of her mother the previous year. Patel then contacted her and once more claimed that he had had his identity stolen and “they were using his number”.
Ms Sullivan, who received a total of 37 unwanted calls, added in her statement: “When I answered the first call, I felt disgusted and objectified. As the call woke me up, I wasn’t prepared for what he said. I just hung up. Hanging up didn’t put a stop to the impact of the call. I was in a state of shock and disbelief. I tried to put it behind me, but then he stated calling me on a weekly basis.
“I would often cry myself to sleep. He would call in the early hours of the morning. I started to feel sleep deprived. I could never return to sleep when he called. I felt like I couldn’t trust any of the men in my life. I kept them at a distance. I was consumed about who it was behind the calls. I felt like that caller could be any one of them.”
Patel has no previous convictions, but was handed a 10-year stalking protection order by magistrates last week. Mark Ford KC, defending, told the court: “I will not seek to make excuses for Mr Patel’s conduct. He must take full responsibility for these offences and does. Prior to the commission of these offences, he did not have a single stain on his character. He comes from a caring and supportive family. He had a happy childhood. Both of his parents are professionals. He has been well educated. He had a good job. Yet here he is, receiving his sentence having pleaded guilty to offences which I readily accept are serious.
Patel admitted four counts of stalking involving serious alarm or distress. Sentencing, Judge Anil Murray said: “You were attracted to them. You used the details they had given in their applications to ring them up, breathe heavily and make vile threats. You tried to hide your identity behind withheld numbers and using a false accent. You accept that this was a breach of trust. You take full responsibility. You come from a caring family. You are intelligent and well educated. You now understand the effect of what you have done.
“I am sure that was a difficult time for you, as it was for many. But I cannot see how it encouraged you to ring women and threaten them. You say that it never went beyond fantasy, but your victims did not know that. It is clear that what you did was to increase your feelings of power and control and to obtain sexual gratification. You must have known the effect what you were doing would have. You were spreading terror amongst your victims.”
