Has the Post Office covered up an appalling miscarriage of justice?
Lives destroyed. A pregnant mother jailed. Even suicides. As more than 500 of its former staff sue it after accusations of theft . . .
seven, in June 2011, two months after her release: ‘After that I didn’t want to leave the house. I was too ashamed to even visit my doctor.’
Her conviction became common knowledge, her husband was beaten up and heckled for being ‘a thief’. They sold the post office for less than half the price they’d bought it for and moved to another Surrey village to escape the finger-pointing.
Davinder found work as a taxi driver, but Seema remains unemployed: ‘I tried to become an Uber driver, but was refused because of my conviction. To this day I can’t get a job.’
In 2012, the Post Office, which has 11,500 branches in the UK, initiated a ‘mediation’ scheme among some sub-postmasters as part of their investigation. ‘Some cases were settled but we don’t know to what degree as it was kept confidential,’ says Nick Wallis, a former BBC journalist who has followed the case closely since 2010. ‘Some people attended mediation and some walked away because it wasn’t giving them what they wanted.’
Certainly, Noel Thomas, 71, convicted of false accounting and sentenced to nine months in prison in November 2006 after a shortfall of £48,455 was found at the post office he ran in Gaerwen, on the Welsh island of Anglesey, calls mediation a ‘waste of time.’
Although an accountant submitted a report on his case to Second Sight, who wrote to him to say they had found ‘no evidence of theft,’ he received the letter alongside a rebuttal of the findings from the Post Office and his criminal status — currently under review — so far still stands. A former local councillor, Noel says losses in his accounts under Horizon would inexplicably double over night, but that he was told by the helpline any problems would be sorted, so signed off the accounts. ‘I was devastated to be charged,’ he says. ‘I’ve never broken the law.’
He spent the first eight days of his sentence in a high- security prison, where he was allowed out for only an hour a day. He shared a cell with a drug dealer and spent his 60th birthday incarcerated.
When he was freed on a tag after 13 weeks, he couldn’t sleep with his bedroom door closed: ‘ I kept thinking of the key being turned as it was inside. Sometimes I still keep it open.’ He says when the mediation process started he was denied access to documents such as his diary and accounts, which were ‘swiped’ by auditors from the branch he and his wife Eira had run since 1981.
‘The Post Office said there had been a fire in their warehouse and they’d got destroyed. Then they told Second Sight they had been water damaged and couldn’t be recovered. I thought they were telling lies,’ he says.
Forced into bankruptcy when the Post Office demanded their money back, he is now working at a garden centre. Any compensation he receives will go to his three grandchildren. ‘Money’s not important,’ he says, ‘ but I wouldn’t mind a letter saying I was not guilty.’
Mother- of-three Wendy Buffrey, 59, was charged with false accounting and theft in 2010 after £26,500 went ‘missing’ from her post office in Up Hatherley, Gloucestershire. The theft charges were dropped, but she pleaded guilty to false accounting and was sentenced to 150 hours’ community service.
AS WITH everyone I spoke to this week, Wendy was told she was the only sub-postmaster to have this problem with Horizon, compounding their sense of shame and isolation: ‘I felt I was going mad.’
It was two years before Wendy, whose GP prescribed her antidepressants, was charged.
‘I felt sick. My solicitor said if I pleaded not guilty I’d get a custodial prison sentence,’ says Wendy, whose customers believed in her innocence throughout and came to court to support her.
Her home and the post office attached to it were seized and sold to recover her ‘debt’ and she had to move in with her son.
Now a health-and-safety consultant, she says defiantly: ‘I want to clear my name.’
While Second Sight declined to comment, the Mail understands they stand by their findings.
Fujitsu, the company that operated Horizon, still used by the Post Office, albeit in an updated version, also declined to comment.
The Post Office, meanwhile, which stands to lose tens of millions of taxpayers’ money in damages if found guilty, is adamant it owes no apologies.
A spokesman told the Mail: ‘The Post Office is strongly challenging allegations being made by a very small proportion of mainly former postmasters. The claims are now a matter for the Court to examine.’
Only time will tell who is right.