Post Office scandal: Stop the game right now, pleas victim

A victim of the Post Office IT scandal has made an impassioned plea that the organisation front up to its mistakes and pay proper compensation.

"Stop them," Oyeteju Adedayo implored the chairman of an inquiry into one of Britain's biggest miscarriages of justice. "Stop the game they are playing right now."

Despite her conviction being overturned the former sub-postmistress said the Post Office had still refused to give her an interim payment, which other exonerated victims have received.

The Post Office said in a statement to the BBC: "Interim payments have been made in good faith to the overwhelming majority of people whose convictions have been overturned. The payments are considered on a case-by-case basis in the light of the Court of Appeal's judgement."

Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 sub-postmasters and mistresses were accused of theft, fraud and false accounting. A total of 72 have had their names cleared so far.

The inquiry, led by High Court judge Sir Wyn Williams, is examining whether the Post Office knew about faults in the IT system, Horizon, developed by Japanese company Fujitsu.

Ms Adedayo was giving evidence at the start of the second week of an inquiry that is expected to last the rest of they year.

She ran a Post Office near Gillingham, Kent, and experienced difficulties when trying to make the computer accounts match what was happening in her branch.

After an audit in 2005, she said Post Office investigators turned up and questioned her alone. "I was told you better get yourself a lawyer, because you are going to go down for a very long time."

Through tears, she told the inquiry she was so afraid of being given a prison sentence that she taught her eldest daughter how to use the washing machine, and told her to make sure her two younger siblings did their homework in case she didn't come back from court.

• Post Office scandal: I considered ending my life

• Post Office scandal 'nearly killed me', inquiry hears

• Former Post Office manager speaks of scandal 'hell'

She was given a 50-week prison sentence, suspended for two years. The judge said because she had started the process of re-mortgaging to pay the Post Office back, and because she had three young children, he would not enforce a custodial sentence.

She paid £54,000 to the Post Office by re-mortgaging her home, which was later re-possessed, and told the inquiry she was too ashamed to go to the school gate, consistently cried at home, and couldn't face people. After the conviction someone wrote "thief" on the wall of the shop.

She said her children "were lost in it all... They didn't know how to help me, and I didn't know how to help them".

When she bought the Post Office, "I was a young entrepreneur, looking forward to life, and being part of the community… just full of life. All my plans, all my aspirations went down the drain."

When the nightmare began all her children were under 12. "My oldest is now 29. We are old now," she said.

Pauline Thomson realised she was not alone after she was contacted by the Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance

Earlier, victim Pauline Thomson told the inquiry how she was sentenced by the court on the day her daughter went into labour.

She described how no matter how many times she processed the money at her sub-Post Office in a small Kent village, the sums just did not add up.

"It got to the stage when it was like looking at some other Post Office's screen," she told the inquiry.

"It was telling me there should be £34,000 in cash, and that just wasn't possible, our Post Office would never have that much cash," she said.

In 2008, she was arrested, held in a police cell, and questioned. "I just literally blanked out what was happening," she said on Monday.

On the day of sentencing, with her lawyers telling her to pack an overnight bag, Mrs Thomson arrived at court just as her daughter had gone into labour.

Indeed, she thinks the sentence of 180 hours of unpaid work was probably delivered at the same time as her granddaughter.

As the only breadwinner of the household, and now unable to pay the rent she and her husband were evicted from their home.

Her husband got a job delivering papers in the village, and Mrs Thomson began walking the dogs of her former customers.

It was only in 2010, after receiving a letter from Alan Bates of the Justice for Sub-postmasters Alliance, that she realised she was not alone and many other former Post Office managers were also being wrongly targeted.

Some sub-postmasters and mistresses saw their convictions quashed last year

Former sub-postmaster John Dickson told the inquiry that despite his innocence he pleaded guilty to save his wife more pain.

He said he had spent years trying to block out the memories of being convicted and then financially hounded by the Post Office. "I just don't want to remember it," he said.

Mr Dickson used to work at Rolls-Royce, before taking on a post office in Mansfield. But in 2011 he was dismissed after an audit showed a shortfall at the branch of £29,000 that he could not explain.

Family suffering

He had repeatedly rung a Post Office helpline when the accounting software was producing incorrect numbers, and described staff there as "useless".

When taken to court he pleaded guilty as he believed his wife would have been charged otherwise, and he was given a suspended sentence.

John Dickson said he pleaded guilty to stop his wife being charged

Since that point the Post Office has been pursuing the supposed missing money, with a confiscation order placed on the couple making them repay £100 a week.

Mr Dickson has managed to secure work at a steel plant, and said if it had not been for that "we'd have been out on the street".

He described how his youngest son suffered at school and his wife was shouted at in the street.

Timothy Burgess, another former sub-postmaster, detailed the devastating impact the scandal had on his own family.

Mr Burgess had previously been with the RAF and saw service in Belize, Cyprus and the Gulf War before deciding to buy the post office in Catterick with his wife and two children.

Problems with the Horizon system left Mr Burgess with a £24,000 shortfall at one point. When prosecuted by the Post Office, Mr Burgess agreed to plead guilty to the lesser charge of false accounting. He was given 120 hours community service, and ordered to repay the Post Office £7,500 which he had to borrow from his father-in-law.

Mr Burgess said his mother had died before seeing him exonerated while his sister "thought I was guilty".

"She thought 'no smoke without fire'. I was working for one of the most trusted organisations in the country, it had to be me."

Meanwhile his relationship with his daughter suffered, with her choosing to go to university far away from her home in North Yorkshire.

"Liverpool was sort of far enough for her not to be tainted," he said.