My teacher wife slept with a 15-year-old pupil in a field… and yet she accused ME of destroying our marriage: The ex-husband of Kandice Barber describes how he had to move on from the heartbreak and utter humiliation after she was jailed for six years

Danny Barber still can’t quite wrap his mind round the fact his 37-year-old wife, Kandice, a teacher, had sex with a 15-year-old boy. One moment he tells me ‘she had such a beautiful aura. She was so kind. If you met her, you’d think: “No way.”’ The next, he tries to make sense of it. ‘Was I being stupid?’ he asks.

‘I’m a man. It’s bad enough to be told your wife has slept with someone else but for it to be a child . . . It deflates you completely. You look at yourself and think: “What have I done wrong?”

‘What crosses someone’s mind to think it’s OK to even look at a child in that way, let alone that it’s OK to . . .?’ Danny doesn’t finish the sentence. His revulsion is writ large on his face. ‘Maybe I didn’t want to believe that my wife could do that,’ he confesses.

Kandice Barber was found guilty in 2021 of having sex in a field with an underage pupil after grooming him with sexual messages.

The mother of three boys had been married to Danny for five years. He supported the woman he calls Kan throughout the trial and was described as her ‘rock’.

Danny Barber still can’t quite wrap his mind round the fact his 37-year-old wife, Kandice, a teacher, had sex with a 15-year-old boy

Teacher Kandice Barber, 35, leaves Aylesbury Crown Court, Buckinghamshire, with her husband Daniel, after being found guilty of two sex offence charges related to sending topless Snapchat pictures to a 15-year-old student

When she was sentenced to six years in prison, he posted a photograph on social media of a note placed on a superman T-shirt that read, ‘I love you with all of my heart. Be brave’, alongside a caption saying ‘always’ with kissing emojis and love hearts.

Today the couple are divorced.

‘Until you’re in that position, when it’s your wife or your husband and you’re living that life, you don’t know what you’re going to do. She was adamant she was innocent. I loved her and I believed her.

‘It wasn’t just about sticking by her. Kan had three kids [from two previous relationships]. I’m not their dad, but I was married to their mum, so I wasn’t prepared to let them be ripped apart,’ says Danny who has two teenage children of his own.

‘But we haven’t been together since she went to prison and I haven’t seen her for almost a year.’ He looks down at his hands. His nails are bitten short and he’s forever twisting his fingers together.

READ MORE: Female teacher jailed for having sex with 15-year-old pupil is ‘flirting with lads’ at her new job as gate guard at West London construction site while on temporary prison release 

Danny, 40, is now blissfully happy with a new partner, Charlotte, whom he met in June last year and who is expecting his baby in the autumn. She works in healthcare and is a warm, hugely supportive woman. She smiles gently at him encouraging him to carry on.

‘When I took the kids to visit Kan in prison, she’d be smiling and bubbly and happy. Her hair was done. I’d sit there and feel: “This is wrong. You’re smiling and happy in a place we shouldn’t be coming to visit you.”

‘I was on antidepressants and sleeping pills because I couldn’t shut down. I couldn’t process what was happening. I was averaging two hours’ sleep a night.

‘It was hard for me. Because I was standing by her, people were saying, “It must be a family thing . . . he must be doing it as well.”

‘I’m not saying I’d have topped myself, but I went through the darkest, darkest days. Kan would say she was the one suffering because she was in prison. I’d say: “No, I’m in prison out here having to deal with the backlash.” I was the husband of the teacher who slept with a 15-year-old.

‘She was in a cell so she didn’t have to deal with it. She just had to survive. And then . . .’

He takes Charlotte’s hand.

‘One evening she phoned me and wanted to be romantic. I didn’t want to,’ he continues.

‘She got all upset and it kind of festered from there. I began to see Kan differently. I started avoiding her. She would call but I wasn’t really picking up. I didn’t really want to interact with her. I was still trying to believe she was innocent. She’s adamant she is. She’s never wavered.

Kandice Barber was found guilty in 2021 of having sex in a field with an underage pupil after grooming him with sexual messages

Today the couple are divorced. ‘Until you’re in that position, when it’s your wife or your husband and you’re living that life, you don’t know what you’re going to do. She was adamant she was innocent. I loved her and I believed her’, Danny said 

‘But why would this boy say she’d done that stuff just for the sake of it? It doesn’t make sense. None of it does. Our sex life was . . . there was no reason for me to think she had a need to go somewhere else. I didn’t suspect anything was wrong until the day the police came to our house.’

Danny was getting ready for his job as a trainee supermarket manager in March 2019 when, at 6.30am, police officers let themselves into the family’s five-bedroom home in Princes Risborough, Bucks, with his wife’s keys.

Kandice had been arrested on suspicion of having sex with a pupil at the school where she worked as a teacher who was responsible for organising staff timetables.

‘Kan had gone off to work as normal,’ he says. ‘She gave me a kiss, and said: “Have a good day.” Twenty minutes later my door opened. I came to the top of the stairs and it was the police.

‘The children were in bed. I went into the kitchen. They said they couldn’t tell me what she was accused of. I said, because she worked at a school, it can only be one thing.

READ MORE: Teacher who had sex with 15-year-old boy currently working as a gate guard at a West London construction site – despite technically being jailed for six years in 2021 

‘A police officer wrote something on a piece of paper and slid it to me. I can’t remember exactly what it said because my head was all over the place. Whatever was written, I knew it was child related.

‘I went into shock. I was pale as a ghost. My teeth were chattering. I couldn’t talk. Couldn’t process it. It [child sex abuse] is not something you’d ever want to be associated with.’

Police searched the house, removing phones and computers.

‘Social services phoned to arrange a visit because there were children involved. I remember lying on the bed. It was pouring with rain and I just thought: “What the hell is going on?” I had to take a minute just to breathe. I closed my eyes and thought: “This is not happening. This is not happening.”

But it was. Kandice was questioned at High Wycombe police station and released later that day. ‘I was scared of what she was going to say,’ Danny recalls.

The mother of three boys had been married to Danny for five years. He supported the woman he calls Kan throughout the trial and was described as her ‘rock’

‘I went to collect her. We drove round and stopped in a little parking spot. I just said: “Tell me — is it true?”

‘She said it was lies. All lies. I said: “If you were going to cheat on me we wouldn’t have survived it, but why could it not have been with someone your own age. I wouldn’t be picking you up from a police station. Potentially, you’re going to go to prison.” She cried.’

Danny had met Kandice four years earlier in September 2015 on a dating site. He thought he knew her and insists she was ‘so kind’ and ‘cared about family’. They bonded over days spent at the seaside and playing crazy golf with their children.

They married less than a year later in August 2016. ‘Kan wanted to,’ he says. ‘I feel like she wanted to be loved. I guess she wanted someone to protect her.’

Within three months of their wedding, they’d uprooted from their South London home to be near Kandice’s mother, Dawn, in Buckinghamshire.

Danny, a warm soul, would clean the house after his eight-hour shift at the supermarket and cook the family meals.

Kandice took control of their finances. He says he only ever wanted to care for her. The days and weeks after Kandice was questioned were almost surreal, says Danny.

‘You close the door to the outside world and kind of forget what’s going on,’ he says. ‘We were in our bubble. She wasn’t charged for eight or nine months. She knew it was happening, of course, but she just wanted to live normally for the kids.

Kandice had been arrested on suspicion of having sex with a pupil at the school where she worked as a teacher who was responsible for organising staff timetables 

‘I remember that first week picking up my daughter from school. I’ve never seen the boy. I don’t know what he looks like. I remember looking at boys thinking: “Would he look like that one? Is he her type?” In my head I wanted to say “She’s innocent”, but I still had my own thoughts.’

Doubts? He nods.

‘I’d sit looking at her sometimes thinking: “What’s going through your mind?’ If you’re charged it’s going to court and, potentially, you’re going to prison.”

‘It was surreal. She was sitting on the sofa one day playing with her hair and just watching the telly. There was no emotion. Nothing.’

Danny was at work when, eventually, his wife was charged on three counts of causing or inciting a child aged under 16 years to engage in a sexual act, one count of sexual communication with a child, one count of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activities while in a position of trust, and one count of causing a child to watch a sexual act by a person in a position of trust.

‘When I got home she said they were clutching at straws. A week before the trial started, in September 2020, we had our wedding anniversary. We went out to dinner in a Turkish restaurant. She said she was confident she was going to be OK because she was innocent.’

The trial lasted two weeks, during which Danny gave evidence and was forced to hear humiliating detail of his wife’s text messages, including one that said: ‘You have a bigger penis than my husband.’

He tried to make sense of the evidence. The affair between teacher and the teenager had apparently begun shortly after he and Kandice had returned from a blissful family holiday in Cyprus and had continued after she lost the baby they’d been trying for in an ectopic pregnancy.

When she was sentenced to six years in prison, he posted a photograph on social media of a note placed on a superman T-shirt that read, ‘I love you with all of my heart’

The boy claimed Kandice had told him she was pregnant with his child, not her husband’s.

‘To this day she’s adamant it was mine,’ says Danny.

Kandice was convicted on two sex offence charges relating to sending topless Snapchat pictures and a video, but the jury was unable to reach verdicts on the charges of causing or inciting a child aged under 16 to engage in a sexual act.

A retrial was scheduled for January when she was found guilty of taking the underage boy to a field and having full intercourse with him. She was granted bail for a final night of freedom.

‘I was emotionally drained and scared for her because I knew what was happening the next day. I made spaghetti bolognese and my brother-in-law came over. She had a shower then spoke to the kids individually and went to bed. I thought she’d be awake all night, but she slept. I was in and out of sleep. I remember looking at her thinking: “Tomorrow night, you’re going to be in a prison cell away from this luxury — a queen-sized bed with an en suite. Tomorrow’s going to be completely different. When am I going to see you again?”

‘There’s also a part of you thinking: “You’ve been found guilty of sleeping with a child. I’m embarrassed. I married you — I gave you my last name and you’ve shamed it in the darkest possible way.” ’

A month later Danny’s step-father died, followed in August by his sister. He was devastated. ‘Sometimes you have to go through the darkest days to find that, actually, there are brighter ones,’ he says. ‘My best friends have been so supportive — without them, I don’t know where I would have been.

‘The one person who should have been there for me — my wife —was in prison. It was like we were separated. All I did was work and go to bed. I wanted to live my life.’

He began talking to a girl online ‘who made me feel better about myself’, he says.

‘When Kan found out, she said I’d broken her heart and that I’d destroyed the marriage. I said: “I’ve destroyed it? Not you being in prison, but me?”

Teaching assistant Kandice Barber, 35, of Wendover, Buckinghamshire, leaving Amersham Law Courts, Buckinghamshire, with her husband Daniel in 2021

‘She filed for divorce. We both wanted it. I wanted everything to be gone.’

He and Charlotte met in June last year. ‘I didn’t tell her about Kan for six weeks because of embarrassment. How do you say to someone: “Oh by the way, darling, I’m married but my wife’s in prison because she’s been sentenced to six years for having sex with a child”?’

Danny last saw his wife in January when he returned to the house they’d once shared to collect some possessions. Kandice had begun spending weekends at home on temporary prison release, a process designed to help re-integrate inmates before they leave prison.

She works as a security guard on a construction site and expects to be released from jail early next year, after she has served half of her sentence.

‘I’ve begun to process things and see things differently,’ Danny says, holding Charlotte’s hand. She is expecting a baby boy who they plan to call Leo.

‘If any teacher ever touched my son I’d want justice. I think every parent would say the same. I just wish there was a way I could find out what Kan actually did. It doesn’t make sense and it’s never going to make sense.

‘Even if in 30 years’ time she were to find me, apologise and tell me the truth I’d want her to. It’s the not knowing that’s so hard.’

He pauses. ‘Although the fact I say I don’t know if she’s innocent probably says it all.’

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