Despite breaking regulations in jail to have a fling with a female inmate, a Wendover paedophile teacher, Kandice Barber , imprisoned for luring a teenage pupil into having sex in a field has been released from custody.
After spending half her jail sentence, 37-year-old Kandice Barber intends to begin reconstructing her life with her three children.
Her rights were taken away when it was found she was seeing convicted fraudster Jay Delaney on work release from East Sutton Park Women’s Prison in Kent.
Prison officials found pictures of Kandice Barber and Delaney taken together, and penalties—including limited visiting hours—were applied.
Her release date has not changed, though, and she is thought to be waiting for Delaney to get out of jail so they may resume their romance outdoors.
According to a source, “She can consider herself quite lucky to be released at the halfway point of her sentence after such a major infringement of prison rules.”
Kandice Barber will be closely watched as a sex offender even though she is now out of jail and must register her whereabouts and data with the police.
‘Sex offenders have some of the toughest licence restrictions and can be thrown back behind bars if they break the regulations at any time in their sentence,’ a Ministry of Justice spokesman said.
From Wendover, Bucks, Kandice Barber was eligible for parole in April after being imprisoned for six years and two months at Aylesbury Crown Court.
However, her conviction and remanded in custody awaiting punishment in January 2021 meant she might be freed under probation service monitoring at the end of February.
Kandice Barber sent her 15-year-old victim topless photos and a video of her engaging in a sexual act, so corrupting him.
Having taken his phone number at a school sports day prize-giving, she started contacting the lad in 2018.
The books became sexual, and Kandice Barber scooped him up in her SUV before heading to a field in October 2018, where they had sex in the remote location she had investigated online.
She kept texting him, one of them declaring, “You cannot make me blush when I am teaching now, poker face.”
Kandice Barber began a connection with con woman Jay Delaney in August of last year while they were both housed in an open women’s prison.
Beginning her five-year imprisonment for her complex £388,000 scam in April 2022, Jay Delaney, 34
Another comment asked: “Do you prefer boobs or bum?” she emailed him a photo of herself curled on a bed surrounded by sex toys.
Recorder Bal Dhaliwal said Kandice Barber had ‘acted in gross breach of trust’ and had taken ‘advantage of a child in your care and groomed him for your sexual gratification’.
She told the teacher: ‘The victim was a 15-year-old boy in his final year at school. You had control and authority over him. He felt drawn in by you due to the compliments you caused him to engage in sex with you while he was a pupil in your care.
‘You threatened to take him down with you if he reported it. You already had authority over him by your position, but to use threats is beyond despicable.’
In August last year, it was revealed that Barber had struck up a relationship in prison with Delaney, and the pair were planning to live as a couple after their release.
A prison source at the time said: ‘Delaney is slight and wears her hair in a boyish style; when they started their relationship, people were saying she must be Kandice Barber ‘s type.
‘They spend most of their time together. It’s been going on for around seven months, and they discuss being a family when they are outside.
‘Kandice Barber gets to go home and go to work. She’ll go out for four nights every two weeks to have access to her kids and also has six days out per month when she is working on a job she’s found by the authorities.
Kandice Barber was banned from teaching for life after a damning report on her behaviour by watchdogs.
‘She isn’t in much, but when she is, she is with Delaney. They openly kiss, cuddle, hold hands, and appear 100% in love; they do not attempt to hide their relationship.
Kandice Barber desperately tried to cover up the relationship, going to the lengths of phoning her now ex-husband, Danny – who she married in 2016 – from prison.
He said last year: ‘It was my birthday when I received a call from her to say I might hear rumours that she was in a relationship with a fellow inmate.
‘This came as a bit of a shock because she had never shown any interest in a same-sex relationship, to my knowledge, in the past.
‘But I have moved on, and frankly, I didn’t care; I was celebrating my birthday with my partner, Charlotte, and the last thing I was interested in was what Kandice Barber was doing in jail.
‘She said the rumours were lies but they have been proven true.
‘Once again, she has put herself first without any thought about the repercussions her actions could have on her family outside the prison.’
While serving her sentence, Kandice Barber was moved away from the prison-appointed job, where she had been found as a security guard on a building site in Hounslow, West London. There was a rebellion among the workforce when her past was discovered, and she was moved from the site near Heathrow Airport.
Before being moved, she was said to have loved working on the site. One builder said: ‘She’s attractive looking, so she’s already proving a hit with the lads, who had no idea about her background.’
Jay Delaney, from Southend, Essex, stole from her victims by claiming to run a get-rich-quick scheme over five years from 2015 to 2020.
Delaney would tell her victims, many of whom were friends and work colleagues, that she worked for Aviva and could turn a £5,500 investment into £10,000 within a couple of years, enticing them to invest most of their life-savings into her ‘scheme’.
She would transfer the money into her account and gamble it online. She sobbed as she was jailed in April 2022 at Basildon Crown Court after admitting 38 counts of fraud.
Judge Samantha Cohen said: ‘Before 2015, you had committed no criminal offences, but between 2015 and 2020, you perpetuated a fraudulent scheme. You preyed on friends and colleagues, and you dishonestly gained almost £400,000 for your gain. You said you worked for a company – that was a lie.
‘You offered substantial returns on people’s investments – that was a lie. Often, on the investments, you perpetuated to repay them with the increased premium. That usually enticed the victim to make further investments. Some of them also asked their friends and family to invest in the scheme. I expect they feel guilty about that, but the only guilt is yours.
‘You came up with a series of excuses about your health or a serious life-threatening illness to put them off the scent of what happened to their money. You confessed to your parents. You knew you had to go to the police, but you didn’t have the strength of character, so you asked your father to do it for you. That must have been one of the toughest things he has had to do.’
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