(CN) — The extent of a sprawling scandal involving the British Post Office has begun to be publicly exposed this week, as an independent inquiry started to hear testimony from victims of the affair.
Between 2000 and 2015, the United Kingdom's Post Office sought more than 800 prosecutions against subpostmasters and mistresses – or SPMs, contractors responsible for running small branches of the Post Office – on charges of fraud, theft and criminal accounting. It secured 705 convictions in total.
However, in December 2020, six of the prosecuted SPMs had their convictions quashed by the Crown Court. Four months later, in April 2021, a further 39 convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal. The British legal system now faces the prospect of all 705 guilty verdicts being found to be potentially baseless, a miscarriage of justice on an unprecedented scale.
The evidence used to secure the convictions was based solely on the financial records of the internal Horizon computer system used by the Post Office to record transactions. Large shortfalls of money were frequently highlighted by the system, with managers stumped by the discrepancies. Accused of theft by the Post Office, the contractors were often forced to plug the gap with thousands of pounds of their own money in order to avoid criminal proceedings. Those who couldn’t do so were prosecuted, with many advised by lawyers to plead guilty to criminal accounting to avoid the more serious charge of theft.
However, the 45 convictions were quashed on the basis that the computer system was faulty, and the discrepancies reported were false.
This week, the independent inquiry set up to examine the affair began to focus on the human impact of the wrongful accusations and convictions, revealing frequently tragic and traumatic testimony from victims of the scandal.
Amid tears, 69-year-old Baljit Sethi told the inquiry that he had contemplated suicide as a result of the impact of the accusations.
“It was a very successful post office, we never had any problems," Sethi said. "We had seven armed robberies, but we never let them take a penny.”
"I was the only post office in the country which was running all seven days [a week]."
Sethi told the investigators that he reported a fault with the computer system when he started noticing shortfalls, but the Post Office showed no interest and nobody came to help. His contract was subsequently terminated.
"People in our community believed we had been robbing from the Post Office,” he said. "It all had a bad impact on us psychologically, financially and reputation-wise."
Margery Williams, 55, pleaded guilty to fraud in 2012 to avoid a custodial sentence which would have separated her from her 10-year-old daughter. She testified that she had since developed diabetes and scarring alopecia and had become a recluse, while her daughter faced years of bullying.
"I don't trust anybody anymore. It's really difficult,” Williams said.
William Graham described how his conviction prevented him from finding further work, damaged his personal relationships and left him depressed.
“Even though I’ve been acquitted, it made me feel useless, because I couldn't explain where the losses came from. It made me doubt myself,” he said. “I doubted myself, I felt like my family doubted me.”
Lisa Brennan spoke about how the theft accusation led to the breakdown of her marriage and left her homeless, with her former colleagues instructed not to speak to her. She described the accusation as “the beginning of the end of my life”.
Another post officer manger, Jo Hamilton, testified that she had “lost the best years of her life” to the ordeal. “It’s horrible to be accused of dishonesty when you are not dishonest,” she said.
