In this episode of "What's the Story," Anna Kettle sits down with Esther Stamp, a remarkable woman whose faith and resilience were put to the ultimate test when her husband, Darren, was falsely accused and arrested for a crime he did not commit. Esther's story is one of unwavering faith, community support, and finding joy amidst the darkest times. Join us as we delve into her journey of navigating this life-altering challenge while holding onto her faith and supporting her family.

Episode Highlights:

1. Faith Over Feelings: Esther shares how she chose to believe in God's goodness despite feeling distant from Him throughout the ordeal. She emphasizes the importance of clinging to theological truths over fleeting emotions.
2. Community Support: Discover how Esther's church family rallied around her, providing practical and emotional support that helped her navigate the challenging two-year period.
3. Finding Joy in Darkness: Despite the grim circumstances, Esther and her family found moments of joy and laughter. She discusses how they maintained a sense of normalcy and humor during this difficult time.
4. Navigating Public Scrutiny: Esther opens up about the challenges of dealing with public gossip and judgment while trying to maintain a sense of normalcy for her children.
5. Lessons Learned: Reflecting on the entire experience, Esther shares the invaluable lessons she learned about faith, resilience, and the power of community.

Join us for an inspiring conversation that explores the depths of faith and the strength of the human spirit. Whether you're facing your own trials or looking for a story of hope and resilience, this episode is sure to resonate with you.

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And now, let's meet your host and our special guest for today.

Hi there everyone and welcome to What's The Story Podcast.

Today I'm joined by a friend Esther Stamp.

Now, Esther is a Yorkshire girl who now lives in the North West, Preston to be

precise, with her husband Darren and three children who arrived to her both

through birth and also the adoption rate.

Two of her children have additional needs, which is something I know about

too, and so life can be pretty busy.

She works part time as an operations manager and is also

very involved in her local church.

She's passionate about walking alongside others who are struggling,

really getting to know people well, and is a keen foodie as well.

So if you go to her house, you'll often find her in the kitchen cooking

and providing lots of hospitality.

Her house is an open house, always full of people walking in and

out and that's absolutely how she likes it, which sounds pretty cool.

So Esther, I'm going to bring you in there.

Hi Anna.

I feel like I want to come around to your house.

You are welcome anytime.

I'll take you up on that offer.

More the merrier.

Yeah, people just walk in, go for it, you're more than welcome to come.

Brilliant, I might just hit you up on that sometime next time I fancy a

trip across the North West to Preston.

Feel free, the kettle's always on in our house.

Love that.

Like any good Northerner, always has the kettle on.

Indeed, yeah.

Tell us a little bit about your background then, Esther, obviously you grew up in

Yorkshire, tell us about your early life, have you always been a Christian or, cause

that's something that came a bit later, tell us about how life looked growing up.

My family are from Halifax I've got three brothers,

so it was quite busy growing up in our house, I think it was early.

Five and a half years between the four of us, so it was pretty full on, and my

parents were Christians, and my dad became a Christian in his mid thirties, so he had

quite a dramatic conversion whereas my mum grew up in a church going household, but,

I don't, she didn't have anything majorly dramatic, and so we, yeah, we were brought

up with Christian parents and going to a very charismatic church growing up.

And then when I left for uni, I, looking back, I definitely wasn't

a Christian at that point, but I was, I think that's quite often

the case, isn't it, coming from Christian households and then leaving.

You can, yeah, it can often be a bit of a tricky time getting to work out

what you actually think and feel.

And I think in the first year of university, I definitely.

I wasn't a Christian, or didn't live as a Christian, at least, and then, in my

first kind of summer, the first summer after my first year, I was on holiday with

my friend Sarah who went to church with us, and is a Christian from growing up,

and I don't think there was a dramatic turnaround, but we went on holiday

the summer after my second year, and definitely there was a massive change from

that first summer to the second summer.

I know she was getting me to read the Bible when we were there in

the first holiday, and we had lots and lots of deep chats about it.

Whether I believed it, did I believe it and what that meant.

So it was quite a slow conversion really in that year, but definitely by the end

of my second year I was a Christian.

It's like you grew up around faith, but then there's a

bit of, and you're right, it's so often the case that like I know for

me, I grew up in a Christian family.

I was a pastor's kid actually, and it's like that kind of going to uni,

having to

figure out faith for yourself, that it's actually is this

just something that I've grown up with culturally or is God actually real for me?

And I think quite often.

Not always, but quite often we hear that and people often share on this

podcast as well that, yeah, it's often in, in moving away and becoming

your own person and finding your own identity as an adult, that it's do

I want to continue with this faith?

Is it real to me or not?

And there's that kind of thing.

Period of deciding whether you're going to go on with your faith or not.

Yeah.

And what they trust in what do you trust in?

What do they trust in?

What is the gospel?

And I'm not sure even when I got there, I would have been able to

tell you masses of the gospel.

But it had planted a seed of some kind.

I know after my first year, I said to Sarah, I've done everything that I

want to do, but and live how I want to live, but something just isn't sitting

right, and it's, something's missing.

So I think being brought up in a Christian home often, it gives you

the kind of realization of there's something more, and then what you, I

guess what you do about that later on.

You find the reason quicker probably from coming from Christian

households, you know where to turn, don't you, when you feel like that.

Yeah, I think that's really right.

And obviously, those were your uni years, which were quite formative,

and then what happened then?

You met your husband, did you meet at uni, or was that later and later?

I stayed in Preston, so I went to uni there and then

he had found a teaching job, he'd become a Christian at uni in Exeter.

Then he went to PGCE in Leeds and did a couple of years teaching there

and then moved to Preston because he had a few friends around here

and a lot of them had left Leeds.

So he was trying to work out what to do and he knew the pastor of our church.

So we thought that's one place where I know people, so I'll look for a job there.

There's a few different places and he got a job in Preston.

So we met at church.

Cool.

Fab.

And then fast forwarding a few years so you get married, you meet in Preston

through church, you eventually get married and and then you had your first child.

But then, we touched on it in your bio at the start, but obviously

there wasn't a straightforward pathway to motherhood because.

You had birth children, but you also had an adopted child, so can

you tell us how did that happen?

Infertility journey come forward.

Yeah, sure.

The, so we got married, I was, I think I was 21, 22.

And then we thought it would be quite simple as, I think, as you tell us to.

I was a bit naive about these things.

And with our first child it took, I think it's quite a year to conceive,

but I don't know if anyone, if you've been through the infertility

journey, but they often at the G.

P.

say, oh, you'll be fine.

Try not to stress, all that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

And so it did we were about to be referred and all that kind of stuff.

And yeah, it wasn't as straightforward as we thought.

And we then we got pregnant and then when I had her, it was a very dramatic birth.

Got induced and then everything went completely wrong.

Emergency section, but very, very emergency.

She wasn't breathing when they got her out.

It was just very dramatic.

And then I had to have some surgery.

So when we had her, we were very aware of.

The fact that future children might not be on the horizon through birth for children.

And that was a correct assumption.

We, yeah, when we came to think about having a second, we just, yeah, we

couldn't conceive and then we went for checks and things and it ended up

being a bit of me and a bit of Darren.

And they said to us.

There's a very slim chance that you will have any more children

naturally conceived children,

which was a bit of a blow.

Kind of amazing

that you'd had one though, even though it wasn't the easiest

pathway in the world to conceive.

Yeah,

I think Yeah, I think the the kind of it's both of you problem,

the me problem, was compounded by having her, so it was already, we're already

on the back foot, basically, and then, obviously, with that as well, it just

meant that the chances were very slim.

But Darren and I had a conversation before we got married.

I've got quite a lot of friends that are adopted and when you're having

these deep and meaningful chats about whether you want to get married in

the future and all that kind of stuff, I said to him, I just want to say

that in the future at some point I do want to have a chat about adoption.

So if it's a definite no, you need to tell me now, so that I don't bring it up.

And he said no no, I'm open to that chat.

That's fine.

So we'd had a lot of chat about it, which then meant that, When all that happened,

we quite quickly made the decision to not go further with lots of treatment.

We had a few friends that were going through IVF, it just, yeah, we were

walking with some friends that were going through it, and I quickly thought,

I don't think this is what I would want to do and we'd had that chat, so

that's how that Adoption kind of journey started and then we adopted our second

child when Poppy, our eldest, was four.

She'd just started school in September and we adopted our little boy in the end

of November, the start of December was all the bridging and then, yeah, then

we got him yeah, as a toddler and they were a total carnage from then on in.

Yeah.

He's absolutely nuts, he's still completely nuts now a

total joy but totally nuts.

And so we went from having one pretty placid four year old to a placid four

year old and a completely nutty 21 month old who, yeah, he's very cute but climbed

everything, grabbed everything, ran away out of the door you'd open the front

door and he'd leg it down the road, it

was a bit of a shock to the system.

When you've got a plastic girl and then you get a boy, little boy after that

anyway, even without them being adopted and having all that extra kind of trauma

that they can bring into life, yeah.

I think that can be quite contrast at the best of times, yeah,

it's a steep learning curve,

let's put it that way yeah, I had to be on it all

the time, I still got to be on it a little bit, but the first few

years were full on, quite full on

yeah.

A steep learning curve and then you had a surprise third.

Then I had a surprise third, yeah.

What more can you want when it's

already Turtle Cavern?

One more in

the same measure.

Yeah.

Obviously that wasn't an adoption then.

It wasn't planned.

It was not an

adoption.

No, it was a birth child.

I surprise Brucey Bonus would call him . So we got yeah, we adopted a

little boy in the December and I found out I was pregnant the next October.

Wow.

Yeah.

Gosh.

And then we had to do new house, new car.

You have we had to go bigger for everything, so it was a lot of,

Yeah, you can't fit three car seats in a car, can you can't, oh, yeah.

It was totally insane, but eight years on, seven years on, it's less

insane, yeah, but at the time it was.

And how old are the kiddos now then?

They are twelve, ten, and then very nearly seven.

A bit of an easier phase than that kind of like

earlier years, but yeah, still

Busy.

Yeah.

There's a lot of bickering, but there's less death defying stunts now.

I can leave them and they don't die.

We've gone through the COVID was our mad stage, unfortunately, we had a

toddler and two homeschoolers and all that jazz, but now it's a bit calmer.

Cool.

Talking of calm times and slightly more mad times then, so that's

obviously one challenge that you've faced.

Yeah.

Through life.

But actually you've also more recently come out of a pretty challenging couple

of years as a whole family, haven't you?

Yes.

I wonder if you can tell us a little bit more about that.

Like just tell us what happened.

Yeah.

Darren was a teacher at primary school and it was also the same primary

school that my children were at.

So he was.

Yeah, he was the one kind of part of the building, and then I was taking

the others, and one day I was going to pick up the children, and got

intercepted by the headteacher, got taken into a room with Darren, and

he said, the police are in my office.

Darren has been accused of sexual assault of one of his pupils in his

class, and said the police want to speak to you, Esther, and so I had

to follow him, and that was that.

I had to follow him to the office, where there were two police officers,

who said, so Darren has been accused of this offence, and until we

get to the bottom of everything.

This is what has to happen, and they said, he's got to move out of the

family home, because in this scenario, you are not allowed to be unsupervised

with children, and those children include your own children, and then

yeah, so I had to figure that out, and at this point, I didn't know where

my children were, so I was sat there thinking where are actually my children?

Thankfully, they were just in a classroom, but I wasn't entirely

certain of that fact at that point.

And then, yeah, that started two years of total turning

your whole life upside down, really, isn't it?

Yeah, absolutely.

I can't imagine how much of a shock that is, because you're just doing a normal

family day, ready to go and pick up your kids and school run, and then suddenly

this whole thing happens that completely turns your life upside down instantly.

If your husband can't come home, he can't live in the family home anymore, he's

being investigated for all these for this allegation that's been made against him.

And what goes through your head at that moment?

And what happened ? Did you, you must've been like questioning yourself

or like thinking, did you for a moment believe it, that it was possibly true,

or yeah Where did that leave you?

I can't even begin to imagine.

At first, very naively, I just thought, oh, this will all

sort itself out really quickly.

Yeah.

That was definitely stage one.

Yeah, even on the evening, my lovely friend, I can't even remember ringing

her but apparently in that chaos I rang her and just said, this has just

happened and she had the foresight to just walk into my house and that evening

and even then I remember just thinking, it'll be fine, this is not going to

last very long, I just need to sort this out, once I talk to him, it'll be fine.

But very quickly I think by the end of that first week, it happened on a

Tuesday and by the weekend it sunk in that this wasn't going to be a quick chat

and off your track kind of situation.

And then I remember, I don't think I even slept one hour

from that Tuesday to the Sunday.

I remember, yeah, on that Sunday morning thinking, when am I going to sleep?

But all through those nights, I went through in my mind every single memory

that I could possibly think of and analyzed it over and over again,

thinking, have I missed something that's been right in front of my eyes?

Have I?

Has this, there's something been going on all this time and

I've just not realized it, but I couldn't find anything in my memory.

I couldn't think of anything that was untoward.

I couldn't think of anything that was even slightly off.

You just, you do go through it in your mind, like thinking, am I totally

blind to something all this time.

And you'd also, it's not only that, is it, but your own

experience because you do hear of these cases where spouses just don't,

don't see that side of, their partner.

But also you'd been through the adoption process by this time, which you had

social workers turning upside down all of your lives and scrutinizing

you quite closely from a supporting point of view, as well as him being a.

Qualified primary school teacher.

So for all of those things, there's quite a lot of safeguarding checks

on a person as well, isn't there?

So

Yeah, with the adoption process as well, you

think if anything was a little bit off, they would have found it.

I guess there are teachers all over the place that have secret lives

and whatever, but with the adoption process, it's pretty impossible to have

anything dodgy, it would just come up.

If your friend even, they ask your friends, they find reference,

like they do all sorts of stuff.

I think we worked out.

I had 20 hours of interview time with the social worker and they asked you

some serious questions that make you self analyze and analyze your family and

everything, and I did remember thinking, Hey, we got through that and nothing came

up in my mind at that point, even that was

remotely negative.

But you do I think I say you have to, not everyone has to,

but that is how it went with me.

Yeah.

I spent a lot of time going over things.

So

you're self reflected and obviously you also got lots of feedback

or friends and family and other people who were like, this just doesn't resonate.

And seem true to us.

Yeah.

And so you find that point of peace somehow, like this.

I don't believe this is true, this allegation is being made falsely,

but even so It's still a lot to deal with initially, isn't it?

All the way through, because

It must have been a lot to navigate, especially you've suddenly got

three, at that point, quite small children in your house.

You've got all this scrutiny on your family because of these allegations.

Your kids go to the same school where it's all happening and you've

still got to turn up there every day.

Yeah.

How do you deal with all of that?

Looking back, I'm not entirely sure, to be honest.

I'd love to have some wisdom, but we're not entirely sure how that happened.

The first week was full on, really full on, because it triggers

everything then, and obviously no one does, as soon as it triggers

something, it goes off on one side.

It happened on the Tuesday.

By Thursday, we had social workers in our house assessing us all, checking

that we're doing, that Darren wasn't.

We were not ignoring the guidance.

By Sunday we knew that he wasn't allowed to go to church anymore

because there's children there and the risk of being unsupervised

with a child that had kicked in.

One of my really best friends, she works for the police and they

had said to her, you can't be involved with this family anymore.

So by a week in, it felt like pretty much everything had been stripped away from me.

Apart from the kids and the house, that's what I had left really so

it was a really grueling process.

And then if you add into that three children whose dad has just one day

been taken away from them they were shell shocked for quite a while.

And the nights, I remember the nights, it's been horrific.

The boys just had nightmares every night, I think.

I just had a child in my bed at some point during the night,

usually, a lot of the time, both of them, so it'd be me, both boys.

So we just felt battered, I think, the first few weeks and then, yeah,

then you add to that, you have to go through the school playground.

That was horrendous.

That, I think that might be the worst bit actually having to walk through.

People chatting, gossiping, children, adults, everything,

and it's all about you.

You've just got to walk through it with your kids who are not deaf and

therefore can hear everything that's being said as well as you can hear.

And I remember just really trying to chat to them to distract

them from what was happening.

Going on around them and we just got back off May half term, which meant I

think it was six weeks until the end of term in July and all through that time,

it was constant chat, constant gossip.

Yeah.

I'm not entirely sure how we got through it, but we did.

But I think one massive thing that I can remember was our church

family just stepping on in there and getting on in our lives and not

even asking us, just going for it.

So even now we are, what will be maybe six weeks after the verdict.

I'm sat in my kitchen and I've got about four or five sets of flowers.

My freezer is full of meals that other people have made.

I have not made.

I've got boxes of brownies in my freezer that people just kept making us.

We kept laughing cause I think we had about 30 sets of 30

brownies to eat at one point.

They're all in there, they just saw a need and just fulfilled every single need

particularly in that first six weeks.

So I think actually how we got through it, obviously the obvious

answers are praying Jesus.

But mostly it was my church family who were brilliant all the way through, but

particularly in those first few weeks.

Yeah, that's amazing and I think church community can really

rally around you and really become like extended family when it's at its best and

I love that was your experience because often I think when life is really hard,

that's one of the ways we experience God with us the most through church.

Other people that you put around as often.

Definitely.

Yeah.

And they just did a

bit more, I was saying this to someone the other

day, you know how people say, Oh, let us know if you need anything.

Actually that puts the onus on the person that's suffering

to say, this is what I need.

Whereas they were great at going, I've just put some dinner in your freezer,

if you want it another day, that's fine, but it's in there if you want it.

And a few people just.

I would say, Oh, you've got this on, you've got that on, let me take them.

I'll take them.

And a lovely lady from church who we didn't know very well before she said

to me, it was maybe three or four months ago, she didn't know straight

away, it's not exactly something spread around to your church families but when

she did find out, she came and said.

Esther, practically, what is the hardest part of your week?

And I said to her I've got one day where I've got to take all of them to the

swimming lesson, come back, feed them.

Take them all to a piano lesson when it's one of their bedtimes.

It's a nightmare.

And she just said, wait, I'll see you on Thursday.

I'll do it all.

I'll take one of them.

I'll take them to the swimming lesson by themselves.

I'll come back, drop them off.

Stay for a cup of tea and then I'll take it was Poppy, our

eldest, Poppy to a piano for you.

Every Thursday, that's fine.

I'll do it for you.

That's brilliant.

And that's what she did.

Isn't that just a great example of how you get alongside someone

who's going through a tough time?

Yeah.

Just ask what the practical need is and just fill it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Amazing.

Awesome.

Obviously, you had a great community around you, but I'm interested to hear

like, how was your experience of like your own faith in the middle of it?

Obviously, you were like crying out to God because you like mentioned like you

got through it with support from other people and so lots of prayer, but like

how was it in the middle of everything?

Did you feel close to God?

Did you sense that he was there with you through it all or?

Who was,

Actually really tough, all those.

I wish I could tell you that I was close to God and sin seemed close

to me, but that would be a lie, so I might as well be real with you all.

Absolutely.

It was bleak.

I didn't feel anything for the whole time, so obviously I can tell you how many years

it was now because we're on the other side and it was almost two years from that

day when I got intercepted to the end of the trial and not one day, not one night,

did I feel God's presence close to me.

I wish I could say otherwise, but I didn't.

But we're in a church that really tries to teach the Bible really well and I am

so grateful that they do it because I think when you don't feel any presence,

you don't feel like any closeness, you've got to cling on to what you know is true

and I'm just really grateful to our church leadership who, each Sunday, before all

this, carry on doing, carry on preaching from the Bible and I think there was

one part where we went through Job and I remember thinking, okay, if Job has

all this horrendousness and he clearly isn't feeling God very close to him.

What did he do?

And I just thought he just cries out to God and he just tells him, he

basically says, what on earth is going on here, doesn't he, to hit to God?

I thought I think that's all I can do at this point.

So that's what I did, but I don't have a nice fairy tale to tell you.

No, and that, that's so often how life is.

And I love what you say there, Esther, about it not always being

about feeling God close to you.

But

so often faith isn't about feelings, it's about choosing to believe,

even when you can't see any reason to.

And I love the fact that you had to choose theology over emotions.

Got to choose to believe that God is good, even when your life

doesn't look good right now.

And to choose to believe God's there, even when he doesn't feel particularly

close in that circumstance and situation.

And just sometimes that kind of clinging on for dear life to God is so

powerful, it

can be quite formative, can't it?

Not at all easy to do, so I really respect that.

And I think we, I remember saying to Darren a few

weeks in, a few Sundays ago, I was there singing about God being God.

We're now three or four Sundays on, and bear in mind Darren wasn't even able to

come with me, so I had to go to church all this time, just me and the kids.

And I remember saying to him, I don't think any circumstance

should make me think differently.

If this is who God is, it's who he is three weeks ago and it's still who he is.

And we just have to remember that because it's really easy right now

to think what is going on here.

I've had enough.

And it was, now a really low point that I had was, it was a real

surprise when Darren got charged.

So he got charged in the March, it happened in the June, we

had to wait all that time.

But it felt and it did happen, every time I really prayed so

hard, something worse would happen.

And the night before he got charged, I was literally on my knees, praying,

crying, just come on, this has got to change and the next day you got charged

and it was, I was like, what is going on?

What is this?

I remember being in the car, driving and going, what is this?

Just out loud, just what is going on?

And so I texted around some of my friends and I just said, I'm not going

to pray about the practicalities of this.

This trial and everything anymore.

I'm going to pray for my children.

I'm going to pray for Darren, but I'm not going to pray about

timings, logistics, anything.

Please, can you do that for me?

And they said, sure, we will pray for that for you.

And lots of them said, And we're praying for you all as well, but

we'll pray about the logistics, I said I can't do it anymore, but I do

still believe God is good, I still believe that he's with me, but I

can't do that side of praying anymore.

It's just too hard and they all just said,

that's fine, we'll do it for you.

I love that.

It reminds me of, I think it's next to us when Moses is like, fighting

battle, when he raises his hands they're winning, yeah, it's really winning.

And then every time his hands get weary and fall, he stopped losing.

So he has to keep his like, hands raised in prayer, as it were.

Yeah.

And when he gets too tired, like two of his other kind of

leaders say, like it gets Erin and her.

Yeah.

Is that right?

I know it's Erin other way.

. Anyway.

Anyway.

So like he gets basically the point is friends to hold arms when

you are too weary and that weary.

And I definitely know that I've been in scenarios in life where I'm like.

I believe God is good and that he will come through in the end, however that

looks, but I don't have the energy to keep praying for a certain outcome that I

don't know if it's going to happen or not.

And I'm just emotionally exhausted.

And I think it's okay to be like I felt like that when we were

like, me and Andy were getting through our current miscarriages,

it's a totally different scenario.

But it's that same feeling, on and on.

And you keep asking for a certain outcome.

Yeah.

And when it doesn't come quickly, it can become very exhausting.

That's, again, it's another area where being a community with

other Believers is so important.

It's key, isn't it, because people can hold you up in prayer

when you're like, I'm tired.

And

it's difficult sometimes, isn't it, being a Christian, because

what we want to say to people is, it'll be alright in the end, but actually

the Bible doesn't say that, does it?

And so it's really hard because what you want to say, what you desperately want to

say is, I know it'll be fine in the end.

But that isn't what it says, and when you know that, you're thinking, ah.

Yeah, and you we have this very Western style

of Christianity, don't we?

Which is quite comfortable and it's oh God, we'll make our lives nice.

And like, when you actually read the Bible, people were killed

for their faith, and had really difficult lives in the Bible, and

they were the heroes of the faith.

We still had really difficult lives, in a lot of ways.

And a lot of their endings were not pleasant, were they?

You think, like John the Baptist and people, you think,

their ends were not fairy tale endings and happy endings, they,

All the way through from start to finish was Pretty grim for

a lot of people in the Bible.

And actually

the only real guarantee we get is like the eternal one, isn't it?

Yeah.

It's it will be alright in the end, but that's in

eternity, it's

not necessarily in this lifetime, which is in

the picture, and I think that's the thing we can often forget.

We're so short, can be so short sighted, but

then

equally, like two years of your life going through this every day.

It's not a short amount of time either, is it?

It's really hard when you're living it day in and day out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a real struggle.

But obviously, you did get through it.

It wasn't easy, as you said, you did get through it and God did come

through for your family in the end.

The trial was concluded about six or eight weeks ago when we were recording

and it came out in your husband's favour.

Can you tell us a bit more about that?

Because actually the jury came up really quickly.

Really quickly.

Yeah.

It was, I think three days, three days the prosecution start off with

their evidence and then it switches to the defence and we had to sit while

Darren gave his evidence, which was

just like nothing, I can't even describe it, I don't think it was, the atmosphere

was just as if we weren't breathing.

I was convinced that I didn't actually take a breath in the courtroom, but

obviously I did, it felt like I hadn't.

And that was his first chance to tell the truth and to defend

himself after all that time.

And then one of his colleagues was one of his witnesses and he did really

well as well, just saying, this isn't true, this is not the man we know,

this is Impossible, that kind of thing.

And then they do their closing speeches.

And we found the prosecution closing speech really difficult because it's

their job, but she was painting him out to be something that he's not.

And her cross examination was quite tricky as well.

Became our closing speech pro the defense, sorry, the defense closing

speech, which was really good.

Just went through who Darren was as a person and kept on going through and

just saying, why would this man do this?

He just wouldn't do this because he's, yeah, it's not who he is.

It's not where he was.

It would be impossible in the scenario that they painted.

And then the jury.

We're sent out, I think it's about 20 past three, something like that.

And we got told at four o'clock we send them home.

So don't expect any decision because it takes 12 people.

We've got to make a coffee each and all the practicalities.

Yeah.

By the time they've made 12 coffees and they've got to appoint a foreman,

that's pretty much your 40 minutes done.

And so that was on the Thursday and they said, Don't expect anything today,

but we, you have to go back into the courtroom for them to send the jury home.

So four o'clock came, we went into the courtroom and they said, okay,

we're going to send the jury home.

However, we have got two, there were three charges and said, we've got two

out of three verdicts if you want them.

We're sat there what?

Okay.

So they said not guilty.

We've not decided.

Not guilty.

Wow.

On the Thursday.

And so the judge said, okay that's two outta three.

We'll see you tomorrow.

And he said, come back at 11 because I've got some cases on and all this does.

Knew that two outta three not guilty is on the Thursday night.

And then on the Friday we went back at 11 and then they'd bring them all in and they

have, do all this, there's a lot, there's a lot of pallava, let's go with, in a

courtroom, which I didn't realize until that week, and then they sent them out to

decide, and the judge said, ever happens, I am in a case until quarter past twelve.

I'll see you then, and we'll see where we're up to.

Which, we were a bit more relaxed on the Friday compared to the Thursday.

I think we've got two not guilties, but also we knew that we weren't waiting

for an announcement, we knew we were waiting until quarter past twelve.

And then quarter past twelve came, and we were wandering in, and the barrister

said to us, unanimous verdict, let's go.

I was like, okay and I think they said it'd actually arrive in seven

minutes, I think that was right, seven?

On the Friday so it was really quick.

Particularly the Thursday was really quick, having not expected

anything to come from that.

And so we, yeah, three charges, three not guilties, all very speedy

in the

end.

I think that's reassuring that you didn't just get the verdict,

but it came back really quickly and, the judges and people involved said

that's, they never seen it concluded so quickly, that kind of a trial.

And so it makes you feel like this is like a, it's really clear and

reassuring.

And we, you don't know when it's you.

So we felt it was really clear, but I'm the most biased person in the room.

So if I think it's clear, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is clear,

but it was really reassuring to hear.

It was to 12 other impartial people who just turned up that

day to be on a jury that week.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's in one hand, that's the end of, not totally because I know there's

still, that you're still dealing with the aftermath of all that, turning

upside down of your lives for two years, but looking back now, a few weeks, out

from it all, what would you say you've learned through the whole process?

Is there anything that kind of jumps out?

I think

there's quite a few things, I'll try and think of one.

I think I've definitely learned to praise God for who he is,

no matter what the what is.

Yeah.

I've learned that sometimes you just have to tell yourself truths.

When you don't feel like any of them are true, you've got to just

preach to yourself sometimes.

Yeah, and we had this, we've got a playlist now in our house

that we played each morning.

Bear in mind you had to get up and go to school to the place where you

would never want to darken ever again.

Every single day and all of them are songs about how God is good, and we

would play it each morning because, and still, we're playing it this morning,

but we played it every single morning to just remind us as we started our day who

we're starting our day with, I think.

And I think one big thing is you think something will never end, and

it feels, some days, On my worst days, I genuinely just wanted to drive

my car into a tree, to be honest.

But I think I've learned that when the day feels too much to just say,

God, please can you just help me get through this hour and let's get to

two o'clock, get us to two o'clock.

That's what we did and you get to two o'clock and then you go for

three o'clock and you go for four o'clock and God's all the way through

sustained us all the way through that.

But it's easy for me to, it's easy for people to say that, isn't it, God

will sustain you, but I think what I've learned is sometimes you have

to just do it hour by hour, minute by minute, and just keep on going.

Yeah, that's really good advice, I think just keep

going and keep depending on, it's dependence on God really, isn't it?

I don't think we realize how much we depend on God until ships are down, and

then life's really hard, and then we really need him, so often, we can be quite

capable company and just going with our own lives and yeah, that as you're

talking, it just really struck me like, yeah, it's just that dependency

on God moment by moment, day by day.

Yeah.

And that, it does bring you joy, that's what, been the surprising

thing that we have learnt, I think.

We were saying this morning, in the car even there's a song, Christ Is

My Firm Foundation, and it says, in it, he brings you peace that makes no

sense and we've felt so much of that.

I'm telling you the worst moments, but I also want to tell you the good

moments because we have laughed so much in the last two years as well and we've

had some seriously dark humor about the whole situation, but we have cried

laughing, we have made the best of a really horrendous situation and things

like we went on holiday to Wales and Darren's not allowed to stay with us.

So some friends gave us some money and he stayed in a hotel down the road

and it was full of really old people.

And now the kids still will say to him you're old cause you

stay in the old granny hotel.

Like just really silly things.

And people, I know that lots of people will say.

We went to the stamps house and you would never know anything was going

on because it feels really normal.

Yeah.

And I, that was only Jesus because I did not want to be happy about anything.

I was so miserable.

But you experienced joy in such dark times and people around you

bring joy to, but also we can find joy even in the roughest day.

That's been one thing that I've learned that I've been really surprised at.

I thought we would look back on two years and just think, wow, that

was a miserable old two year ride.

Actually, when I look back.

It was mostly joyful with a lot of darkness, but actually

a lot of joy in their tomb.

And that's only down to Jesus, because I had no capacity

to do that myself at all,

at any point.

That's amazing.

And I, yeah, and as you say, that could only be, that could

only be Jesus, couldn't it?

That's not what you would expect to be saying about that season.

I suppose now you're settling back into like normal life as a family again.

Yeah.

It just, it must leave you feeling wow, you just,

Don't take all those things that we all take for granted anymore.

Like I'm guessing it's like just all being together must be an

amazing thing, like after two years.

It's, yeah I still find it like amazing that, and I know you've said this, but

that process is so slow and obviously it's important when it comes to

folklording that they're like, sorry.

Yeah.

In an investigation you would hope that the legal system is like that.

Yeah.

The system is like that, but at the same time, it's such a

long time to wait, isn't it?

So much waiting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, and I think it probably is getting worse, I imagine.

I think we actually did pretty well to be just under the two year mark.

Yeah, I, it's just, everything is backlogged, slow, inefficient, all

those things and you forget that there's humans on the other side.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not just a process.

It's like people's lives as well, isn't it?

And like you were saying to me, Esther, before we started the call, but that

obviously like this happens to a lot of people, like allegations are made

of

varying degrees all the time.

And, did you say something like about 900 families a month or a vector?

Yeah, I think it was,

There's a foundation called the Lucy Faithful Foundation and I think

that's the start of their website that, yeah, there's 900, obviously it's not 900

people waiting two years for a trial, but

if you are accused of anything similar, you are removed from the family

home and since this happened to us, a couple of people, of friends and

things, have come up and said, this did happen to us, once, I was like, what?

All a lot shorter than us, but yeah, it happens to more people

than we will ever know, I think.

Yeah, and I guess not all of them, as you say, they don't always

go to trial, they don't always drag on for quite as long as your story did,

so

some of them probably just get dealt with a lot quicker.

And dropped, yeah.

I'm sure they get dropped quite

quickly, but I think, I still think, even if it's been a couple

of months and it gets dropped, these are your children who one day had their

parent there, and the next day didn't, and even if it's a few weeks, a few

months, it will have lasting repercussions for a family for a long time.

Yeah, and you were saying that kind of one good thing that came

out of all this is that a few of the people who've been in a similar scenario

have, because you shared quite publicly about your experiences and yeah, in doing

so, like other people have got in touch with you and connected and said, Oh,

we're going through something similar.

Yeah.

And I think that's amazing how even so recently coming out the

back of it, you're able to be so open about it and just get alongside

and give advice to other people.

Yeah.

I think,

What we didn't expect, what I didn't expect is

the shame, the feeling of shame.

And obviously for me, it was really public, wasn't it?

Because I'm going through a school playground, but I think these kinds

of things that happen to people, your automatic reaction is to hide.

I'm not telling anybody.

I was forced to because the whole of the part of the city that the school

was in basically knew by the end of the week I was forced to be out there

when I would rather have not been.

But I just kept thinking, if this is what I'm forced to do, then I might

as well do something good with it and just be out there and say, yep,

this is us, this is what's happened.

This is the repercussions, or these are the repercussions many of them.

I'm here if you ever want to chat about it, if you ever end up in that scenario

because I understand the need to want to hide away and not tell anybody at all.

And the feeling of shame is really strange because you know you've not done

anything and you've not done anything.

As a spouse, you've not done anything at all, but you do feel a really

strange feeling of wanting to be anonymous and no one ever, nobody

ever wanted to know anything.

And as we said at the start, my house is the type of house

that people just walk on into.

That wasn't why I was like, and what we were like as a family ever before,

so many people have got a spare key, it turns out because people keep

appearing in my house to leave me food.

I think so many people have got a spare key to my house and that was really

normal, and that opposite feeling, you want to lock yourself in, you want to hide

and never leave your house ever again.

I certainly did not want to take my kids to school.

I didn't want to see another human.

And if that's how I felt, it's very likely that's what other people feel.

I think if you can help some, one person that's feeling like that, then great.

Yeah, I love that, I love the fact that you're not just hiding away,

but using your experience to Yeah, advice, be a listening ear, give some practical

advice maybe to others and definitely if there's anyone who listens to this

podcast and is in that space or knows someone who's in that space as well, then

you'd be happy to connect, wouldn't you?

Yeah, definitely.

Like they can get in touch through the Crowd Church website, get in

touch with our team and we'll put you in direct contact with them.

Yeah, definitely.

Because If anyone would like to Yeah, and there doesn't seem

to be much support for, in normal life, non Christian life, for people like us.

I couldn't find anything for us that was specific to us, and

the social worker couldn't find anything specific to the children.

She said all the charities that I know deal with victims of crime,

the direct victims of crime.

And I remember saying, but we're a victim, if my children are victims

of something, what about us?

And there was nothing.

And yeah, if I can help in a tiny way, then that's it.

Yeah, that's brilliant.

It's hard, isn't it?

Because obviously, the legal system says you're innocent until proven

guilty, but actually when it comes to safeguarding, you're treated

as guilty until proven innocent.

Yeah.

Which

absolutely makes sense.

Yeah.

But at the same time, it's just incredibly difficult, but everyone

involved anyone can make an allegation about anyone at any time.

And

yeah, and that's the repercussions.

Yeah, it's, thank you so much for being here and for sharing, your story with us

so bravely, because I think you're right.

It's not, an easy subject to talk about and it's not, it is something

that would often seem like we'll just hide away or now that you're done it

would be so easy to just be like oh thank goodness that season's done,

And never want to think about it again.

Yeah.

And I really respect that you're like No, I think there's something good that

you can do through this experience that will help maybe a few other people.

I do really respect that you're doing that, Esther, so thank

you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me.

And sharing your story.

Thanks.

It's been really enlightening to talk to you and to hear about your

experiences and I just think you're an amazingly strong woman and.

Yeah, just thank you so much for sharing your story and yeah, as I

say, if there's anyone listening who wants to connect with Esther,

then please do get in touch with us.

But that brings us pretty much to the end of this episode, so Esther,

thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks for having me, Anna.

No worries.

And thanks for joining us as well, listeners, we'll see you again soon.

And just like that, we've reached the end of

another fascinating conversation.

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