A Welsh sub-postmaster has spoken about his mental health issues after being wrongly convicted of crimes during the Post Office Horizon scandal.
Mark Kelly from Swansea spoke of his experience at the Post Office inquiry on Tuesday, March 1, in Cardiff ,which this week is set to hear from several witnesses who were affected by the organisation's IT glitch.
Mr Kelly ran the Brondeg Post Office from 2003 to 2006. Problems within the Post Office's computer system Horizon meant it looked like money was missing from branches,- in some cases tens of thousands of pounds was said to be lost.
Mark Kelly and more than 700 other sub-postmasters and mistresses were accused of theft, fraud and false accounting.
The Post Office said it was "sincerely sorry" for how victims and their families had been affected.
Mark Kelly took over the management of the post office from his parents in 2003 following an armed robbery.
During the inquiry, Mr Kelly said that he had felt suicidal following the IT scandal. The sub-postmaster and his wife, Olga, lost their home where they had hoped to start a family.
'I quite often blame myself'
"The Post Office, all the losses, the stress from it and trying to find it all and no-one would listen, how they conducted themselves afterwards," the 43-year-old explained.
"It was too stressful I couldn’t handle anymore. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t think of anything and I knew I couldn’t – I wouldn’t be able to run it anymore. Even if they said to me you can have the office back I wouldn’t be able to run it then.
"I get very anxious now and I get stressed quite easily. I got PTSD and I quite often blame myself... I've become quite suicidal and a couple of times I did try to do it."
A Computer Science graduate, Mark added that he felt he was partly to blame for the problems, as he had figured out that the Horizon system had IT glitches and took screenshots as evidence.
He said: "I gave it to my solicitor who used that as part of the defence.
"[The Post Office] didn’t take any further action but they also did not say they were not going to proceed anymore. So for years later I just felt like - firstly because of the secret act, if I did make it more public they would go after me and also at the time I wasn’t well enough.
"It was only in 2010, I started to become more well and that’s when I discovered about all the other people getting affected with Horizon… I felt I was partly to blame for it all.
"I keep on thinking that I caused some of these problems for a lot of people the fact that I didn’t publish the bug when I could have".
'I can’t see how I can ever get back to that excited young man that I was'
In June 2010, Timothy Brentnall from Roch in Pembrokeshire was prosecuted for pleaded guilty to false accounting after a £22,000 shortfall was discovered . But in April of last year, his conviction was overturned and his name was cleared.
He said his marriage broke down because of trust issues and there was a whispering campaign in the community with people calling him a thief and a fraudster.
But Mr Brentnall said that the scandal has caused him to to "strain every relationship" he had.
The 40-year-old said: "For my parents, it did cost them their savings, cost us all of our future, and cost us all our prospects.
"I was married at the time and that marriage ended because again it caused trust issues. But also obviously the amount of pressure and stress I was under, it changed me as a person.
"When I had the news come through last year that my appeal wasn’t going to be contested, I suddenly had this huge outpouring of every emotion that you can imagine and then almost slept for two or three days. You don’t realise how bad you are until you start to get better.
"It’s been a long time since it happened…I can’t see how I can ever get back to that excited young man that I was."
Following his experience, Mr Brentnall has called for further justice for those that have wrongly been convicted.
During the inquiry, he said: "The problems started with the Horizon but those problems did not end with Horizon. It wasn’t Horizon that prosecuted us, it was the Post Office. It wasn’t Horizon encouraged us to pay back money under threat or theft charges. That was people at the Post Office.
"It wasn’t Horizon that then went on to shred documents. That was people at the Post Office.
"Horizon did not tell hundreds if not thousands of us that we were the only people having problems. That is the evilest of lies and again that was the Post Office and I hope this inquiry will look very closely not only at Horizon but the people."
A Post Office spokesman said: "The Post Office is sincerely sorry for the impact of the Horizon scandal on the lives of victims and their families and we are in no doubt about the human cost.
"The inquiry's hearings enable many of those who were most deeply affected by Post Office's past failings to voice their experiences and their testimonies must and will ensure all lessons are learned so that such events can never happen again.
"In addressing the past, our first priority is that full, fair and final compensation is provided and we are making good progress.
"Post Office is openly and transparently assisting the inquiry in its important work to determine what went wrong in the past and to provide, as much as possible, closure for those affected."
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