Mike Rimmer chronicles the turbulent history of a Jesus music icon, a go-for-the-jugular film maker and his own encounters with both

There are lots of people who would be quite worried that a Christian music artist is touring and yet engaging in a romantic and sexual relationship with one of his singers. Did she not have any qualms about that? How did she get into that position where she was performing gospel music but such things were going on behind the scenes? She responded, "Well, it was romantic but it certainly didn't become sexual straight away. No. That happened some months later, not when we were on the Australian tour. I don't know. . . that's a hard one to answer isn't it? When you really love someone. . . we were beginning a future together and we were unofficially engaged. He brought me a ring that I was wearing so we were planning a future and Larry had a way of putting things. Not that I'm putting the full blame on him. I still had a voice myself. But I had come from a pretty traumatic, abusive marriage and was quite prepared to trust that Larry knew best in this situation, and as we were engaged to be married I thought that it was okay. Which obviously it wasn't! But at the time love was quite blind."

In November 1988, Jennifer discovered that she was pregnant. Larry was still in Australia and at first, Jennifer said, Larry was "over the moon" at the news. But when Daniel was born, Larry's name was missing from the birth certificate. She explained, "Well, in Australia you can't do that. You can't just put someone's name on there without their consent. They have to sign the form to be a consenting parent." By the time of the birth, Larry was no longer in Australia. She remembered, "He visited once in February. He came out for a festival in Melbourne and he was out only for a week I think at that time. He said he'd be back before Daniel was born. We were planning where we were going to live and things like that. So part of that [visit] was for a festival and part of it was just planning our future."

But the planned future never materialised. She remembered, "He promised that we'd be married and that we would live in both countries but he kind of disappeared off the map for quite some time. Oh my goodness, I don't have a real record of all the wrongs but it was a continuum of probably 16 years of promises, not just that he made to me but probably more importantly, the promises that he made to his son that he broke and the damage that it did to Daniel. I was an adult and able to recover from broken promises a lot better than a child."

Didn't Jennifer have the opportunity for a DNA test while Larry was alive to settle the issue of paternity once and for all? Jennifer explained, "There wasn't any sort of reason to prove DNA. Larry had been in contact with Daniel for periods in Daniel's life. We have proof of letters and many emails and there was always that contact that he'd had with him. So there was no real reason for us to go searching for DNA because there was some form of relationship, however fractured it was. Larry had always promised us that even though he was not able to financially help us out throughout Daniel's life that he would be mentioned in the will. I thought that he would leave something to help Daniel on his way in life, as he'd promised. But that was just another broken promise that didn't happen either. So I spent Daniel's life believing Larry didn't have any money to help us and I guess I just believed that. I took him on his word. I wasn't able to fly over there and find out that he did own all these houses and all these cars and had his property and money put away somewhere. I wasn't really in that position. I was raising four children by myself and I just had the attitude that you trust someone until they prove they're untrustworthy. And this is someone that I loved very deeply."

Since Jennifer Wallace chose to go public about Daniel's parentage, she has found herself under fire from both Larry Norman fanatics and from Larry's family. In particular Charles Norman has consistently disputed the authenticity of Jennifer's claims. For her part Jennifer steadfastly maintains she has evidence from correspondence with Larry as well as plane tickets, passport stamps, etc. But what about the emotional damage done to Daniel through this very public scrutiny? "I tried to do it privately," Jennifer asserted. "That was the first thing I did when I heard that Larry had passed away; I tried to contact the Normans over and over and over again for some time privately. There was no response. So I started posting my letters on the internet, on Larry Norman's fan sites, saying here we were. Daniel was absolutely distraught that his father had died and we were just looking to be able to find some way to get to the funeral. After some period of time Charles actually phoned me and said, 'Stop. I'll listen to you but stop posting these posts.' So we actually had a conversation that I thought was quite civil for probably close to an hour, I think, that afternoon. I felt that we were dealing with things quite privately and I also spoke to Kristin, his wife."

She continued, "I was a little nervous on the phone because I'd never spoken to Larry's family during this entire time. It was 18 years almost. I said it was a 10-week tour of Russia or something. I tripped up on my facts; it was a 10-week tour that was INCLUSIVE of Russia. But for some reason Charles and Kristin decided to pull that apart and dissect it and she'd said I was not telling the truth. So yes, we definitely did try and do this privately as we've followed through and then we went to the pastors. And then we've gone public. We've done it in an order that we felt we had to do, but we have had to do something for Daniel's sake. Not for mine, but for Daniel's."

Despite the smokescreen from the family and loud protests from Norman fans and questions about the veracity of Jennifer's claims, there is one easy way for all of this to be proved one way or another. And that is through a DNA test.

Di Sabatino obviously believes that Jennifer's claims are beyond doubt. "The court in Portland, Oregon already adjudicated on this. But even beyond that you had people in Australia coming to the front and saying, 'Look, we've known for years that this kid was Larry's. We have email evidence. There are letters between Larry and Daniel. There are letters between Larry and Jennifer. There's a lot of evidence. There are pictures. There is a conversation that took place between members of the Larry Norman family before he passed away about this whole situation. There's a ton of evidence beyond that! If people are just going to sit there and say, 'This is all circumstantial', how many times do I have to say it before you just realise that you're just putting up a wall?"

But surely a DNA test is the most sensible thing that should be done. "Absolutely!" Di Sabatino agreed, "You know, there's another piece of evidence. If all of this is untrue and all of it is circumstantial, you want people to shut up? Do a DNA test! We would shut up in a second, right?" But what would happen to his film if a DNA test proved Jennifer's claim to be untrue? Di Sabatino explained, "I already emailed to Charles that if Daniel is not the son of Larry Norman I will take my movie away. That's how convinced I am that this is Larry's son. There's overwhelming evidence!"

But getting a DNA test has proved to be problematic. Jennifer maintained, "We've had several letters sent and we've had to find ourselves a lawyer in Salem, Oregon, that would carry through with our story to try and present the Normans a request for DNA. Several letters they have just chosen to ignore. We've now actually had to go a bit further and get a court order for them to present DNA. I'm not afraid to present DNA. I know that Larry is Daniel's father and that Daniel is definitely his son. There's no question of that. We were very much in love and planning a future and there was nobody else."

Her response led me to ask a delicate question, one which so enraged Di Sabatino that he subsequently broke off all contact with me. I asked Jennifer whether she was in any kind of sexual relationship with anybody else at the same time as her relationship with Larry. "No. Definitely not. No. He was my world; my absolute world." Off air after the programme I spoke to Jennifer at length and apologised for having to ask such an intrusive question. Jennifer graciously accepted the apology and the spirit in which it was asked. Sadly, as it later turned out, Mr Di Sabatino was less forgiving.

Randy Stonehill and Larry Norman

Jennifer still has hopes for the future. "I hope that we can go forward with the DNA and then make a public announcement that this is the case. And my hope is I guess for some sort of reconciliation with the Norman family on some level. That Daniel can be able to say that they're family, whether he chooses to move forward with any friendship with that family. But at least that can be a matter of choice. I would love it if they could embrace him and see how much like Larry he is and what a wonderful human being Daniel really is and allow that to just sort of bear some fruit in the future. I've not been able to deny that I've had the baby. Larry, for some reason, for whatever reason, went back and decided that he was going to deny this and not move forward with the future; deny it publicly but not deny it privately. There was still a level of, 'I'm waiting for you,' and things like that, that went on for years and years and years that of course the public don't know anything about."

As my live on air conversation with Di Sabatino continued, he became increasingly agitated that I had chosen to fire at him some of the questions that Larry Norman fans were asking. But overall, what was he hoping to achieve with Fallen Angel? "The same thing [as] with the Lonnie Frisbee film, that these are stories of biblical magnitude; that these are characters that God uses. I mean, look at the upside of this story; that here's a guy that even in spite of all this, God still used this guy. Now that doesn't justify him. This is what these people are doing; they're saying, 'But he brought all these people to the Lord!' 'But he did this!' 'He did this!' And therefore we're supposed to just wink at the other stuff. See, the problem is that we have poor theology that comes from Larry Norman fans; that comes from Larry himself; and these people have bought into it."

He continued, "It's unfortunate, Mike, that you're coming at this from the Larry Norman fan perspective because I think they are a vocal minority. I think the majority of people that see the movie are transfixed by it. They understand that lives are full of this stuff and yet God still is faithful to walk beside, even if you go through the valley of the shadow of death. Nobody can judge the heart of a man except God but here is a guy that God used, and yet these things are true too. This is a holistic story but you have to be able to embrace the nuances. People that can't of course are going to say, 'Oh, this is horrible!' I [can't accept that] it's horrible. These stories are in the Bible!"