Set free to set others free

Esther grew up as a Christian in Sierra Leone then, at age 23, she moved to London to start her dream career. From the get-go, the racial abuse began. Esther was spat at, told to “go back to Africa”, excluded, humiliated and bullied constantly by her colleagues, even receiving death threats. Managers witnessed it all, and turned a blind eye.

Strangled and left for dead

Not one single colleague stood by Esther during the assaults. Isolated and alone, she grew anxious and dreaded going to work. One morning during an early shift in 1997, Esther was making the tea and one of the worst of the male bullies told her: “This tea is crap!”

Esther remembers: “I stood up to him and replied: ‘If the tea’s crap, make it yourself.’ I left and went to my car. He followed me out, grabbed me, and snarled: ‘if you ever talk to me like that again I’ll break your f*#king neck!’ ‘Go for it!’ I said.” 

And he did. 

It was 6:30am, pitch black with no one around. In hate-fuelled rage, the man slammed Esther against the front of a car and began to strangle her, lifting her clean off the ground.

My colleagues told me to ‘go back to Africa’

“I was screaming for help. I swiped at his face with my hands and as I began to lose consciousness, I thought: ‘Is this what it’s like to die? What will my poor family think?!’ The next thing I knew, I was waking up on the ground where a female colleague found me, pain pulsing through my throat.”

The colleague had heard Esther’s screams, but arrived too late to see the attack. With no security camera, it was Esther’s word against the attackers. “My boss just shrugged off the murder attempt and told me: ‘Pull yourself together, it’s part of the job, just get on with it.’”

Living with constant workplace abuse 

Esther’s attacker was charged but not prosecuted as things couldn’t be proved beyond reasonable doubt. Esther, traumatised, moved to a new department for work. Once again it was male dominated and the bullying, racism and abuse continued unchecked and unchallenged.

One day someone wrote a sexually explicit, degrading message in Esther’s name in a colleague’s birthday card, and everyone laughed. Another time she was assaulted with degrading sexual actions while a group of men watched and laughed.

“My female colleagues just said: ‘That’s what men are like. Don’t react.’ Managers either ignored it or saw it as banter. I started to keep a written record of the abuse in my diary as evidence. They even shoved pornographic content in my face. The work environment was beyond toxic. I learned to sort of switch off and pray in tongues to try and block out the constant perversity.”

Overwhelmed and tormented

Under so much stress, Esther became withdrawn and started to stammer, living in constant fear of her colleagues. “In 2004 I finally went to my GP, who immediately diagnosed me with acute anxiety and depression. She put me on anti-depressants and wrote me a sick note. My sister took me into her home, or else I would have been sectioned. Then the wheels finally came off. I started to have nightmares, crippling panic attacks and suicidal feelings. I was constantly shaking and could no longer talk.”

Esther’s psychiatrist diagnosed her with the “worst anxiety she’d ever seen”. She was under constant supervision from a psychiatric nurse because she was a danger to herself. One day she even crashed her car into a tree. “Even though I had suicidal thoughts, I never planned to take my own life because I was scared to die.”

Esther’s church was a lifeline. Her pastor invited her to hang out at the church in the mornings and help with admin. “I have always known the Lord, and prayer was the only thing that saved my life. I prayed all the time, mumbling because I couldn’t talk – everyone thought I had lost it and was talking to myself! I would cry out to God on my knees: ‘Lord don’t pass me by. If you pass me by, I’ll die.’ There are even two patches worn in the carpet in my bedroom from my kneeling.”

Demons would appear in my room at night, and whisper: ‘No one cares for you. Kill yourself’

Esther realised one day that, despite always having a faith, she’d never “said the sinners’ prayer” so in 2004, she prayed a simple prayer stating she believed in Jesus “to be sure”. 

Then Esther began to be tormented by demons. “Demons would appear in my room at night, and whisper: ‘No one cares for you. Kill yourself.’ I would mumble ‘Jesus do not pass me by!’ and they would disappear. I would go to church the next morning and put on worship music and sleep there because I was perpetually exhausted from being too scared to sleep at night.”

A life-changing encounter

Then one night in 2005, everything changed. Esther was dozing off in a sitting-up position on her bed with all the lights on, terrified of what the night would bring. “I prayed: ‘God help me.’ A light appeared and began to grow from one corner of my bedroom, and Jesus himself walked to the foot of my bed. I recognised him. I felt safe. He asked me: ‘What can I do for you?’ I answered him: ‘I want to live; I don’t want to die.’ ‘OK,’ he replied. ‘What else?’ ‘I want to be able to talk again’ I said, and he stretched out his hand and anointed my mouth.

“He talked to me like a friend, like he had known me all my life. The next thing I knew it was morning; 15 hours passed in a moment! My life snapped into alignment: my fear was gone and the demons left and never returned. Everything was as it should be.” 

Esther began her recovery from trauma and mental illness, and learned to speak again with the help of speech therapy. She knew God wanted her to help others encounter Jesus like she had, and in 2008 she led her church in rolling out anti-bullying campaigns across primary schools in London.

She then went to a conference where Heidi Baker and James Maloney were speaking. Maloney shared a prophetic word over Esther in the meeting in front of 1,400 people: “You’re two years into a healing journey and recovery from a mental breakdown, and you’re going to release breakthroughs for many other people. He is going to send you!”

Set free to set others free

A few years later (2010), Esther’s pastor prophesied she would go to America. When she got home, Esther heard God say: “Get your laptop and type in ‘Bethel church’.” She did, and saw there was a conference coming up that next week at Bethel Church, Redding, California, and she knew God was calling her to go.

During her time in Redding, every night she had a vision of driving down a long road through mountains and conifer trees. When she finally went to Bethel church, as she drove along with her friends and saw Mount Shasta, she realised it was the road from her vision! “Then I learned about Bethel’s School of Supernatural Ministry (BSSM), and I prayed: ‘God, if you want me to do the school, I will.’”

When Esther got home, she was waiting to hear back from a grant application for the anti-bullying schools’ programme. She prayed: “God if you want me to stay, give us the grant, if not, I’ll go and do BSSM.

“When the schools programme called, they said: ‘We loved your application but we’re afraid this time you weren’t successful.’ I hung up the phone very cheerfully after saying: ‘Thank you that’s great!’ and went and applied to BSSM.”

Esther ended up serving with Bethel for seven years. She did three years of training at BSSM, then interned and after became ministry associate to the director Chris Gore: “We travelled all over the world praying for people and saw amazing miracles. In Chile I laid hands on a lady’s grapefruit-sized cancerous tumour on her arm. I commanded it to dissolve in the name of Jesus. And it did! We both screamed – it was completely gone.”

Today Esther is based in London and in 2013 she launched her ministry, Crowns of Fire. She says she “lives by faith, serving women worldwide for healing and breakthrough”.

Esther has been on a huge journey of forgiveness and healing. She was struck by the truth that “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to drop dead.” Weeping, she forgave her abusers each by name for all the things they did.

“I’m in touch with a few old colleagues from work who apologised for not backing me up at work those years ago. When someone tried to take my life because I stood up for myself, it was incredibly painful. I fell at the mercy of the God of justice who said in Isaiah 61:8: ‘For I, the Lord, love justice; I hate robbery and wrongdoing. In my faithfulness I will reward my people and make an everlasting covenant with them.’” 

Esther encourages us all to: “stay on fire for Jesus in the secret place. Always make room to encounter Jesus despite busy schedules – because it changes everything!”

Learn more about Esther and Crowns of Fire at estherbeckley.com/cofm 

Words by Becky Hunter-Kelm