Karen Wilson, a former police constable, told the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry the decision to prosecute her husband “massively contributed to his early death.”
Former sub-postmaster Julian Wilson died in 2016 and his conviction was overturned last year. During his trial at Worcester Crown Court Mrs Wilson recalled that: “He had half the village there with references,” to support him.
Mr Wilson was one of more than 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were prosecuted by the Post Office based on information from its faulty Horizon IT system between 2000 and 2014. A High Court ruling in 2019 found the system contained “bugs, errors and defects”, causing a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts had been caused by the system.
The couple bought their post office business in 2002 in Redditch, Worcestershire and her husband initially ran it before she joined him, working side by side, a year later. She told the Inquiry they were often in the post office at 10pm if the books weren’t balancing.
Julian, she said, spoke to other sub-postmasters about discrepancy issues and how, when a manager came to visit, said, ‘it will sort itself out’ but Julian replied ‘that’s not good enough’ but he got no answers.
In 2008 auditors arrived at 8am and a £27,900 shortfall was reported, her husband, she said, was suspended at 8pm that night. “The investigators came to the house asking, ‘where’s the money, where’s the jewellery, where’s the holidays’?” she recalled.
Just before his trial at Worcester Crown Court Mr Wilson agreed to admit to two charges of false accounting in order for the theft charge to be dropped, “I thought, I can’t believe this is really happening, this was not British justice, he wasn’t allowed to stand up and give evidence,” his wife told The Inquiry.
Mr Wilson was handed a sentence of 300 hours of community service and the business they had bought for £125,000 was sold for £67,000. “I had 30 years of jewellery and sold it all for £900, including my engagement ring, it paid for the mortgage that month,” she said.
The effect on her husband was a “very, very slow decline” she recalled. “I said, we have to keep going, we have to live and stay alive. He would talk about suicide, and I used to say that’s not going to happen, this will eventually end, this won’t last forever.”
But Julian died in 2016 from cancer, “This massively contributed to his early death,” she said, but “he didn’t complain. I said I would carry on and that was my promise to him.”
Before his died Mrs Wilson told the Inquiry that her husband had “played detective” and despite the Post Office telling them, “they were the only ones” they met with 14 others with similar experiences in a village hall and “that gave him a focus to fight it,” she said.
She told The Inquiry: “I want to know why the Post Office did not listen to the people who were running these businesses. I want to see accountability. I can’t believe alarms were not going off, and who signed all these prosecutions off? I feel people are hiding away and they need to come and answer because it’s not right what they have done.“
‘I considered ending me own life and drove to a viaduct’
Gillian Howard told The Inquiry how she drove to a viaduct with the intention of jumping off after an audit showed a £48,000 shortfall at the post office she ran with her husband Graham.
They bought the village business in 2002, but when her husband had a stroke in 2008 at the age of 50 she took it on full-time. Mrs Howard, now aged 62, said over those years there had been small shortfalls which they would personally cover.
But in 2010 there was a shortfall of £22,000 and auditors arrived, “I panicked and said I had a doctor’s appointment and handed the keys over. I considered ending my own life and drove to a viaduct. I sat in the car and I talked to myself and I knew I had to return to see what they would find.”
The audit showed a shortfall of £48,000 and then, she told the Inquiry, “We made our biggest mistake and signed to resign.”
On the day of her daughter’s wedding a letter arrived from the Post Office saying they were prosecuting her: “It was the worst day of my life; we were robbed of that wedding day,” she recalled.
At court, with her husband Graham in a wheelchair, Mrs Howard pleaded guilty to a single charge of false accounting and was given a six-month probation sentence. She said she then “became a recluse. I didn’t tell anyone I was involved.
“This year I decided I’m not hiding anymore, I decided that people need to know,” and said she wanted the Post Office, and the public to know, that they had “destroyed myself and caused my family distress and hardship”.
Mrs Howard is one of 56 former Post Office workers to appear before the Inquiry, all supported by Hudgell Solicitors to successfully appeal against their convictions and have them quashed at the Court of Appeal last year.
Despite the Post Office admitting there were 736 convictions of Sub-Postmasters in which Horizon was ‘intrinsic’ to prosecutions – and therefore unsafe – still less than 100 people have had their convictions quashed.
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