‘No future’ Horizon victim left to live ‘hand to mouth’ after scandal
A former subpostmistress has told how she has lost her life savings and lived “hand to mouth” for 15 years after the Post Office tried to convict her. Sarah Burgessboyde, 59, who took over the Starbeck Avenue branch in Newcastle upon Tyne in November 2005, said she had “lost everything” in the scandal. After she flagged to bosses that the Horizon IT system was showing a shortfall in her branch, she was subject to a three-day audit in 2009, which would land her in court, wrongly accused of stealing £33,000. Despite being acquitted in December 2011, she is facing retirement without any pension or savings.
“I was suspended then I went through the disciplinary procedure including a fraud investigation. I was charged with theft, I was eventually taken to trial in December 2011,
where I was acquitted when the Post Office presented no evidence,” she told the Today
programme on BBC Radio 4. “I have lost everything – I’ve lost my business, all my savings, I haven’t got a penny to my name. “I’m not futureproofed. I’m nearly 60 and have no pension provision. I’ve lost my reputation and I lost everything.”
It is a far cry from her former life, where she was earning £60,000 a year and featured in the Post Office’s in-house magazine Subspace to share her “secrets of success”.
In an interview yesterday in which she fought back tears, Ms Burgess-boyde said the Post Office took an approach of “you are guilty”, adding that “you had no opportunity to prove your innocence”, while “they didn’t want to listen”. “When the fraud investigators came to search our house, my partner said [to them], ‘It is clear from what you have said that you just don’t understand what has happened. You need to get help to investigate this,’ and they just looked at him like he was stupid and walked away,” she said.