A former Post Office operator’s wrongful conviction over missing funds “massively contributed” to his early death, his widow has said.
On an emotional third day of evidence in the inquiry into an IT scandal at the company, former Post Office workers said their lives “fell apart” and they were left feeling “worthless” and shunned after being wrongfully convicted. Some have called for the company’s former management to be jailed.
Julian Wilson was one of more than 700 post office operators prosecuted between 2000 and 2014 based on information from the Horizon IT system, installed and maintained by Fujitsu. He ran a post office in Astwood Bank, Worcestershire, where auditors found more than £27,000 missing in the branch accounts.
After being suspended in September 2008 and charged with false accounting and theft, he was left little choice but to take a plea deal to avoid prison, said his widow, Karen, and he was sentenced to community service and given a confiscation order for the missing money.
After that he was unable to find work, their assets were frozen and she ended up pawning her belongings including her engagement ring to get by. Her husband “couldn’t face it” and “just hid himself for about a year”, she said, and he would sometimes “just fall apart and talk about suicide”.
Wilson died of bowel cancer in 2016. His conviction was overturned in April 2021. His wife had promised him to fight to vindicate him. “He was only 67. I never said that this did kill him but it did massively contribute, definitely.”
Earlier in the day the inquiry heard from William Graham, 53, who managed the Riverhead sub-post office near Sevenoaks. He was convicted for the concealment of supposed losses of £65,521 in January 2011 and received a suspended prison sentence. He was one of 39 former workers to have their convictions quashed by the court of appeal in April 2021.
Fighting back tears, Graham told the inquiry his conviction had left him feeling worthless. “I visited the area with my wife and we were basically told ‘we shouldn’t be speaking to you, we shouldn’t talk to you, we shouldn’t be seen to be talking to you’,” he said.
“Anyone I had on Facebook, social media, anything like that, immediately went. As soon as I was accused of theft, not even found guilty of anything, it was all my old customers on there … I just felt worthless, I felt worthless to my family, I felt they all saw me as a guilty person and, on paper, I was.”
He paid tribute to his wife for standing by him through the ordeal. “If it wasn’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be here now. I would have got to a stage where I felt like I wouldn’t want to be here. I wanted it all gone.”
Harjinder Butoy, 45, ran the Sutton-in-Ashfield branch in Nottinghamshire with his wife until he was arrested, charged and jailed for three years and three months in 2008 for stealing £208,000. When the guilty verdict came in, Butoyhe said, “I just fell apart”, adding that he “wasn’t prepared for it”.
Gillian Howard, 62, who took over running New Mill Post Office in West Yorkshire after her husband had a stroke, said she had contemplated suicide when the branch was audited on 27 May 2010.
“I talked to myself and I thought about my family … I knew I had to return and face whatever they were going to find and I didn’t know what they were going to find. I suspected a shortfall but I hadn’t counted it, I’d just balanced.”
Howard pleaded guilty to fraud in relation to an alleged £45,850.05 shortfall, receiving a six-month community sentence order. She found out she was being prosecuted on the morning of her daughter’s wedding, which she said was the “worst day of my life”.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123 or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. For more information visit www.samaritans.org. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 800-273-8255 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at www.befrienders.org.
