Pastor stole my wife!

             Gilbert Emannuel Painto   

They say hell has no fury like a woman scorned. Well, they should also have said something about a man, hell, fury and a woman snatched.

Gilbert Emannuel Painto threw Global Victor’s Church in Nakuru into the limelight last Sunday after storming it, not for prayers, but with claims that the pastor had executed a ‘palace coup’ and taken away his wife of seven years.

His story was all over the electronic media, something that earned him both fame and infamy. He could have previously gotten lost in a crowd of three in the streets of Nakuru, now he hardly walks three stride before a stranger gleefully stares at him.

Gilbert sat down for an interview with The Nairobian and poured his heart out about Esther. Okay, he prefers to call her “Essy,” the humble Christian and loving mother of his five -year-old daughter, who woke up one night, tapped him and before he could wrap his mind around anything, Essy blurted any man’s worst verbal nightmare: “We need to talk!”

Essy demanded an immediately separation. She had arranged with her parents. A vehicle was coming to pick her the following morning.

Gilbert was confused. And desperate. He went down on one knee, not to proposed again, but to plead for ‘leniency.’

“I didn’t believe it,” recalls Gilbert. I almost collapsed after realising she meant what she said, I pleaded to her a million times but she went silent and returned to sleep.”

It has been two years of pain, anguish and blatant heartbreak. Gilbert pegs his marital woes on three suspects: -Esther’s parents’, the very people he entrusted his life and faith in.

He accuses them of conspiring to break his young marriage to marry off their daughter to a wealthy pastor at Global Victor’s Church.

Pastor Henry Semiac, his third suspect was brought to the church a year ago as the secret plot hatched against him flourished under the watch of top church officials who he says would have stopped the mess.

“How can church leaders organise to bring down another man’s family? Some people should tell us who else they really serve in church apart from the God we all know,” poses Gilbert.

Semiac last week pointed a warning finger at Gilbert in the full glare of media cameras. Semiac is smitten Gilbert’s ‘Essy.’

Semiac refers to 28-year old Gilbert as a mere “sperm” donor and a terribly irresponsible man who failed to convince a woman even after wooing her to his house for seven troubled years.

“There is great difference between a sperm donor and a husband. The latter is a responsible person who knows how to take care of their offspring and wife. He should get this very clearly and stop living unrealistic life,” says Pastor Semiac.

But Painto blames his poor background and measly earnings from his music production work to the loss of the girl. He says his income is a drop in the ocean compared to Semiac’s who is said to be running some unknown businesses in Nairobi.

“I know she left me because I don’t have a lot of money and her parents advised her against this. I am also a poor boy hustling to make ends meet,” he sighs before deleting the last photo of Esther in his Samsung S5 phone.

Pastor Semiac, however regretted the events that led to Sunday’s incident confirming his engagement to Esther. He says that the duo met almost a year ago and their friendship blossomed like a rose in the desert.

Semiac and Esther are planning to wed on an unspecified date which he won’t share with the press. He wondered why Gilbert did not approach him for the past one year if he really knew they still had something with his wife.

“If he was man enough he could have approached me for a talk which I couldn’t deny him. For now I have no time for that, we are planning our wedding. Let him follow the law if he formally married this woman. This is my wife and we are in love,” the pastor warned.

Interestingly, Esther’s parents Bishop Joseph and Lucy Wainaina, the founders of Global Victor’s Church in Kiti, Nakuru are staunch Christians. And church leaders. Their hands in splitting the marriage and love life of “their” children, according to Gilbert is highly sinister.

“The vehicle that came to pick her that morning when she stormed out of my house is their parents’. I was grounded to death, I rescinded to stress and pain,” offers Gilbert.

This marked the beginning of his tribulations. His determination to get back his wife was met with untold denial and embarrassment.

Numerous trips he made to Esther’s home in Milimani Estate were thwarted by security guards at the palatial home. They severally assaulted and threw him out like a rag. This was followed by dire warnings from Esther’s father when he demanded to see her.

“I was not allowed access to their home, they lived in White House before relocating to Milimani which was a bit difficult to enter due to high security,” he says.

Gilbert’s efforts to visit her daughter at a nearby kindergarten she was attending was equally sobering. He daughter was hostile to her and even called her by name “Gilly”, a habit he says her grandparents had a hand in instilling to the minor. “I fell down in tears after realising my daughter had been indoctrinated to disown me, a systematic way of “stealing” babies by hypocrites.”

He also realised that Esther had gone ahead and changed her name from Arlin Shirlyn Painto to Arlin Blessings.

Lucy Wainaina, Esther’s mother, rubbished her involvement saying Gilbert stole her daughter after she completed high school.

She, however, confirms the two have been living together with their full knowledge adding that she severally assisted them when in need.

“I loved them as my children and even assisted where necessary as a parent. What Gilbert is spreading are lies and they are out there to spoil our name when he knows things can no longer work in his favour,” she says.

She accuses Gilbert of infidelity besides mistreating and abusing Esther even after taking her innocence when she was a young girl.

“Esther cried most of the time they were living with this man, he had many girls and I was the one who comforted her during most of the conflicts,” she recalls.

Gilbert changed with the birth of Arlin in 2009, says Esther. He became unpredictable and moved around with several women. Esther accuses Gilbert of insatiable appetite for women besides being an irresponsible man who lost focus long ago.

Esther swears she has no traces of love left for Gilbert and wants him to leave her alone to enjoy life with the newfound “King” of her troubled heart.

“I gave him a daughter but he was not grateful. He has never paid dowry to my parents even after mistreating me. I said enough is enough and I have moved on and my child will remain mine, he has nothing to claim,” maintained the born-again Christian, who says she was ready to settle down with Gilbert, but he failed to mature for all the seven years.

“See him, he is using the media including Facebook to “expose” me, that won’t undermine me, I am a clean girl who is just following my heart. And what is wrong with that?”

Gilbert spent 48hours in police custody for allegedly causing disturbance in the church and assaulting a guard, but vows to exhaust all avenue until he repossess custody of Arlin Blessings.