‘Jilted’ boy ‘made up affair with married teacher to win back his ex-girlfriend’s attention’

A heartbroken teenage boy made up an affair with a married teacher more than twice his age so he could win back the attention of his ex-girlfriend, a court heard today.

The 15-year-old schoolboy says that he had three sexual encounters with 35-year-old Kandice Barber, who is alleged to have sent him a text message which said ‘he had a bigger penis than her husband.’ 

Prosecutors told a jury how Barber suggested she might be pregnant with the boy’s child, which kept him quiet about the affair because he did not want his child to be born in prison.

Barber had later implied she would accuse the boy complainant of raping her if he told the headmaster, at the school where she worked and he studied, about the affair, it was claimed.

The court heard evidence from one of the schoolboy victim’s close friends who said he’d seen messages from the woman teacher.

‘First I didn’t believe it at all, then I started seeing the videos and messages and all that, I was like “yeah, it’s probably true”,’ the witness said.

‘The messages said that he (the complainant) had a bigger penis than her husband.’

Nadia Chbat, counsel defending Barber, alleged the complainant had invented a police interview in January last year as a conversation starter with his former girlfriend, who he had broken up with in October 2018 after years of dating, but said was still the person he trusted most.

Ms Chbat, speaking to the boy who appeared at Aylesbury Crown Court on a video link said: ‘If mum described you as sobbing and devastated in early October 2018, that would be wrong?’

The court heard how the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had shown his ex-girlfriend a topless image of Barber as ‘proof’ while the two spoke in January last year about their teacher on Facetime, and the complainant’s ex-girlfriend advised him to go to the police.

In a text transcript read to the court, the boy’s ex-girlfriend had said to him: ‘If she goes anywhere near our friend I need you to tell me. No joke, she’s a paedo. People are starting to find out about you and Mrs Barber now, by the way.

‘Why did you not tell me about this? I am not supposed to talk to you but you came to me for advice and this is a big deal so obviously I care.’

After speaking to his headmaster about the rumours of the affair at the Princes Risborough School in Buckinghamshire, the boy complainant had told his former girlfriend that he had had a ‘police interview’.

Cross-examining the boy, Ms Chbat asked: ‘You are giving her the impression, aren’t you, that you have spoken to the police, but that was not true, you had not spoken to the police. 

‘Can you help us, why are you misleading your ex-girlfriend at the end of January about this?’

The boy replied: ‘I did not want her to know about the whole situation anyway. Obviously, if I did not follow the advice from her, she would have gotten annoyed at me.’

Ms Chbat said: ‘She would have stopped talking to you, would she? So, you were doing it to get her attention, were you? She was certainly concerned about you.

‘That was a problem at the time for you, in January 2019 people did not believe the rumours. Because she did not believe you, you had to show her a picture of Mrs Barber. 

‘Was that the same for your other friends that did not believe you until you showed them a picture of Mrs Barber?

‘You began, I suggest, to become obsessed with Mrs Barber and you told your friends that you and her were having private calls on Snapchat. You told your friends that you were messaging the teacher and they did not believe you, did they?

‘I suggest that you, frustrated that people did not believe you, hacked into Mrs Barber’s Snapchat account and got a photograph of her, then I suggest you started circulating that photograph so that people believed you about Mrs Barber and you.’

The boy rejected Ms Chbat’s assertions and his evidence was formally concluded, after which other children at the school were expected to be called as live witnesses on the third day of the trial.

Barber, now 35 and of London Road, Wendover, Bucks., denied 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.

Explaining the position of trust charges on the first day of the trial, Mr Milne had said: ‘In this jurisdiction, England and Wales, teachers are not permitted to have sexual relations with pupils and it is not to do with the age of consent, it is because they are in a position of trust, be they male or female.

‘The law does not permit, indeed criminalises, any sexual activity between a teacher and a child under the age of 18 years, even if they were consensual relations.’

The hearing continues.