Post Office victim cleared after nine years of hell
A VICTIM of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal spoke yesterday of the shame she felt for nine years before being finally acquitted of fraud.
Jacqueline Falcon was vindicated after Crown Prosecution Service lawyers did not oppose her case at the Court of Appeal.
The trusted Post Office clerk of 15 years was arrested in front of her family while pregnant with her fifth child, after she reversed transactions to cover up a missing £1,000 thrown up by the flawed computer system. In 2015, she was given a three-month suspended jail term at
Newcastle
Crown Court and ordered to pay £933.69.
It was only when she received a letter from the Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigates miscarriages of justice, that she began her legal fightback.
Unlike many staff, Ms Falcon was taken to court by the Crown Prosecution Service, not the Post Office.
The CPS indicated it would not have brought the case against her had it known about Horizon’s major accounting software flaws.
Former parish councillor Jacqueline, 42, of Hadston, Northumberland, said: “I have spent the last nine years with depression. I don’t like to go out alone, I feel everyone is looking at me.
“It has had a massive effect on me and my family.
“A lot of my customers stuck by me and didn’t believe I had done anything wrong. But some people were really nasty.
“My oldest children, 15 and 13 at the time, were bullied at school. One person said, ‘Your mum only got pregnant to avoid going to prison’.” Jacqueline said she “thought of every scenario possible” when the £1,000 went missing. But she did not know the Horizon system, which could be accessed remotely, was producing accounting errors.
Admitting fraud on her barrister’s instruction, she said: “The judge made me feel really stupid, saying if I hadn’t stolen anything why was I trying to pay the money back? But I hadn’t stolen it, the money had just vanished.”
Jacqueline praised the ITV drama Mr Bates Vs The Post Office, saying: “I thought it was brilliant.
“People will be more understanding now and the show did a good job of explaining the problem.”