'Was I stupid?': Husband of teacher, 37, jailed for sex with underage pupil admits he 'loved and believed her'
14 August 2023, 08:35 | Updated: 14 August 2023, 09:58
The husband of a teacher convicted of having sex with a 15-year-old pupil has questioned if he was "stupid" to stand by her even after she was found guilty.
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Kandice Barber was given six years in prison for having sex with the underage boy in a field.
Then-husband Danny Barber, 40, stuck by her during the trial which received national attention, even posting a photo to social media that told her he loved her "with all of my heart".
"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," he told the Mail.
"It wasn't just about sticking by her. Kan had three kids. I'm not their dad, but I was married to their mum, so I wasn't prepared to let them be ripped apart.
"But we haven't been together since she went to prison and I haven't seen her for almost a year."
The pair, who met in 2015 via a dating site and were married for five years, are now divorced.
Police visited their house in Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire, March 2019, when Danny was getting ready early in the morning for a shift as a trainee supermarket manager.
Officers let themselves in with Kandice's keys, as she had already been arrested, and took away phones and computers. She had left for work as normal.
He asked "was I being stupid?" over the affair, in which it emerged she told the boy he had a bigger penis than her husband.
"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?'" he said.
"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...? Maybe I didn't want to believe that my wife could do that." He added: "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."
Despite his initial support for her, he began to look at her differently during her spell in jail.
"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.'"
He said she once called in the hope of getting "romantic" but got upset when he told her he didn't fancy it.
He started refusing to pick up the 37-year-old's calls until their marriage ended when Kandice filed for divorce. Now he has found love with a new woman, Charlotte, who he met in June 2022.
Kandice was recently pictured working at a construction site where one witness said she appeared to be flirty.
She picked up some of her belongings when she visited the home in January but they have not seen each other since.
"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 said.
"Although the fact I say I don't know if she's innocent probably says it all."
