Son of Greater Manchester post officer worker cried as mother jailed

Dan Donovan's mother spent three months in jail after funds disappeared

The son of a Post Office employee who was jailed over missing funds said he broke down in tears after police knocked on the door of his family home.

Dan Donovan was 13 years old when his mother was sentenced to six months in prison after £20,000 went missing from a post office in Greater Manchester.

He said his family felt "like it was just happening to us" until ITV drama Mr Bates v The Post Office aired.

It was "reassuring" to see they were not the only people affected, he added.

The 33-year-old said his mother, who does not want to be named, had used the faulty Horizon system at an Urmston post office.

"You just kind of thought that it was just an unfortunate situation in your own family, and that it didn't happen to anyone else," he told BBC Radio Manchester.

"So then when it all got brought to light, it sounds horrible, but it was reassuring to know that my mum wasn't the only person that had gone through that."

'Just sobbing'

Mr Donovan said he answered the door when two police officers came knocking to speak to his mum more than 20 years ago.

"It was all very confusing, no-one knew why they were there at the start, but then mum came in, she was just sobbing, bless her, she didn't know what to say."

He said police were investigating his mum while she taking him to hospital three times a week for treatment for a skin condition.

Mr Donovan said she could not explain why the money had disappeared, but had evidence she was innocent.

• 'I kept Post Office scandal a secret from family'

• 'We lost our house and now live in a caravan'

• Why were hundreds of Post Office workers prosecuted?

She spent three months with a "great big police tag" attached to her foot after serving half of her six-month sentence, he said.

"It would ring if she took the bins out after 19:00", Mr Donovan said, adding the authorities would question her about what she was doing.

He said he did not know why his mum, who was not a postmistress or subpostmistress, had been treated "the same as bosses".

A recent apology to victims of the Post Office scandal from tech giant Fujitsu, which designed the faulty software, seemed like "an admittance rather than an apology", he said.