This week, a public inquiry opened into how hundreds of Post Office workers were wrongly prosecuted for stealing company money, destroying their reputations and leaving them bankrupt and in prison.
More than 700 branch managers were given criminal convictions when faulty accounting software Horizon made it look as though cash was missing from their sites.
The mistakes led to ‘the worst miscarriage of justice in British legal history’ as dozens of innocent people were sent to jail for theft and fraud and others were driven to bankruptcy and suicide.
It took 20 years of campaigning for victims to finally win a legal battle to have their cases reconsidered and convictions quashed.
But many died before their names were cleared.
The inquiry – which is expected to run for the rest of this year – will investigate whether the Post Office knew about faults in the IT system and how staff came to shoulder the blame.
As it gets underway, Metro.co.uk takes an in-depth look at the origins of the scandal and why justice took so long to come about.
What was the Post Office scandal?
Between 2000 and 2014, the Post Office prosecuted 736 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses – an average of one a week – based on information from a recently installed computer system called Horizon.
The faulty accounting software made it look as though money was missing from their branches.
Some went to prison following convictions for false accounting and theft, and many were financially ruined as they were forced to pay back the missing money – in some cases hundreds of thousands of pounds.
Those caught up in the scandal have described being shunned by their communities and unable to find work due to their criminal convictions. At least 33 are thought to have died before their names were cleared.
After 20 years, campaigners finally won a legal battle to have their cases reconsidered, after claiming that the computer system was flawed.
What is Horizon and what was the glitch?
Staff members were prosecuted based on information from the Horizon IT system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu.
The system was put in place in the Post Office in 1999 to be used for accounting and stocktaking, but sub-postmasters soon raised discrepancies after noticing the shortfalls themselves.
Some sub-postmasters attempted to plug the gap with their own money, even remortgaging their homes, in an attempt to correct an error.
For years, The Post Office maintained that Horizon was ‘robust’ and that none of the losses in branch accounts were due to problems in the system.
How Were The Victims Affected?
Many former postmasters and postmistresses have described how the saga wrecked their lives.
The victims had to cope with the long-term impact of a criminal conviction and the trauma of imprisonment, some at a time when they had been pregnant or had young children.
Many people pleaded guilty because they did not want to go to jail, or because they accepted the money had vanished, though they did not know how. Those who avoided jail still struggled to find work due to the criminal conviction.
Marriages broke down, and courts have heard how some families believe the stress of the scandal led to health conditions, addiction and premature deaths.
Summarising how the miscarriage of justice has affected its victims, Jason Beer QC, counsel to the public inquiry, said: ‘Lives were ruined, families were torn apart, families were made homeless and destitute.
‘People who were important, respected and integral part of the local communities that they served were in some cases shunned.
‘A number of men and women sadly died before the state publicly recognised that they were wrongly convicted.’
Who were the victims of the Post Office Scandal?
In total, some 3,500 postmasters were wrongly accused of taking money from their businesses.
These are just some of their stories
Those known to have died before getting any form of justice include ex-police officer Peter Holmes, whose conviction was overturned in the Court of Appeal last year. The father-of-three, 76, did not live to see the day he was finally cleared, as he was killed by a brain tumour in 2015 after his conviction sent him into a depression.
His widow Marion Holmes, 79, said she had ‘no doubt’ the shame of being branded a criminal ‘contributed to his untimely death’.
Julian Wilson, who ran a post office at Astwood Bank, Worcestershire, also had his conviction overturned but died from cancer beforehand. The conviction left him unable to work and resulted in his assets being frozen.
His widow Karen told the BBC that the investigation and his illness ‘broke him in the end’.
Baljit Sethi, 69, and his wife Anjana, 67, who have three children, told the inquiry they ‘lost everything’ after being left with a bill of £17,000 due to the defective system.
Mr Sethi, who was not charged, said he was ‘down and out’ and contemplated suicide as he struggled to provide for his family.
Another victim was former postmaster Noel Thomas, 74, who was jailed for nine months in November 2006 after pleading guilty to one count of false accounting, on the basis that he accepted there was a shortfall of £48,450 which he was contractually obliged to make good, but did not know how it had come about.
He told the inquiry of his ‘hell’ behind bars, including the ‘indignity’ of showering in front of a prison warden and only being allowed out of his cell for food.
After his sentence his sleep was ‘terrible’ because of his fear of confined spaces, he said. He also lost his position as a councillor and was declared bankrupt in 2008, the inquiry was told.
Another victim, Seema Misra, was pregnant with her second child when she was convicted of theft and sent to jail in 2010. She said that she had been ‘suffering’ for 15 years as a result of the saga.
Damian Owen, from Anglesey in Wales, was jailed for eight months after he was accused of stealing £25,000.
He said he lost four stone in the first 10 weeks of his sentence and that his mental wellbeing continued to suffer after his release as he could only work ‘bottom of the rung’ jobs because of his criminal record.
Mother-of-one Margery Lorraine Williams, 55, also from Anglesey, was left to pick up a bill of just over £14,000 because of the system fault.
Ms Williams told the inquiry she had pleaded guilty because she did not want to go to jail and leave behind her daughter, who was 10 at the time.
She spoke of being ‘humiliated’ after receiving a 52-week prison term suspended for 18 months.
Ms Williams said: ‘It was horrendous because it was like a little village for us and my daughter had grown up there from one to the age of nearly 11.’
Speaking about the physical effect of her ordeal, she went on: ‘I’ve got type 2 diabetes now and I’ve got scarring alopecia, which means the hair is gone and won’t be replaced.
‘I was a recluse, I wouldn’t go out. I still don’t feel I’m the same person and I do get angry at times.
‘I don’t trust anybody anymore. It’s really difficult.’
She also told of how her daughter has been bullied at school and that her family has struggled financially
What has happened to the criminal convictions?
The sub-postmasters and their supporters campaigned against their convictions from the beginning.
Several of them sued and in December 2019, at the end of a long-running series of civil cases, the Post Office agreed to settle with 555 claimants.
The Post Office accepted it had previously ‘got things wrong in [its] dealings with a number of postmasters’ and agreed to pay £58m in damages.
However, the claimants only received a share of £12m after legal fees were paid.
A High Court judge ruled that Horizon’s system contained a number of ‘bugs, errors and defects’ and there was a ‘material risk’ that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.
The ruling allowed several cases to be brought forward to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), an independent body which investigates suspected miscarriages of justice.
So far, the convictions of a total of 72 former postmasters have now been overturned, with more expected to go through the courts.
This included 39 postmasters’ convictions being quashed in a landmark single ruling in the Court of Appeal least April. Another 12 were cleared in July.
The judges determined that the 39 convictions were ‘an affront to the public conscience’.
That means the postmasters may pursue civil action against the Post Office for malicious prosecution, seeking significant sums in damages.
Will the victims receive compensation?
Ministers have set aside more than £1 billion to settle claims with victims. The government has been forced to step in to fund the bill after the Post Office said it could not afford to compensate victims properly.
These will only be interim payments and victims will be entitled to seek further damages through civil lawsuits or out-of-court settlements, which could run into the millions.
More than 2,400 people are believed to have applied for compensation so far.
Meanwhile the Post Office has said it will co-operate fully with the public inquiry, which is due to deliver its findings in the autumn.
The High Court ruling saw the judge promise to refer Fujitsu to the Director for Public Prosecutions for possible further legal action.
What will the inquiry examine?
So far, no nobody at the Post Office or Fujitsu has been held accountable.
The inquiry will consider whether the company knew about the faulty system and how staff bore the burden.
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