A former post office operator who was convicted of false accounting as part of the Horizon IT scandal missed saying goodbye to his dying father because of a curfew related to his conviction.
Mohammed Rasul, who was convicted of false accounting after an audit showed a shortfall of £12,000, said he became “a recluse” and had to wear a tag for three months after receiving a suspended 12-month sentence. “I have carried the shame ever since. I refuse to carry it any longer,” he said. Rasul said he missed saying goodbye to his dying father because of his curfew.
From having a “full social life”, he cancelled his all his engagements, and saw only his children and wife. “Even my parents didn’t know, my siblings didn’t,” said Rasul. “Although I knew I hadn’t done it, it was just the stigma attached. You had to explain if anybody asked, what had happened. I just couldn’t explain that something had happened which was totally out of my control and I had to justify it or defend it.” He said he paid the shortfall. “Out of my savings, what little I had, and some borrowed money so I wouldn’t go to prison,” he said.
Rasul was speaking on BBC Breakfast as part of a group of former Post Office staff who were victims of Horizon IT scandal and told of the shame and stigma they carried for years.
Eight of those affected, and the son of a ninth, appeared on BBC Breakfast on Wednesday, including Janet Skinner, who served three months of a nine-month custodial sentence for false accounting after a shortfall of £59,000.
Skinner said: “It’s affected everything of my life going forward for the past 16 years.” Prison was “horrendous, just horrendous”.
“I think it was harder, as well, because I had two teenagers,” she said. Newspaper reports of her prosecution saw her “just labelled a thief, anyway”. Thanks to the recent ITV drama, she said, there were “a lot of people out there who now understand what we have been through”.
Tom Hedges, who ran a post office for 16 years near Skegness, had his 2010 conviction overturned in 2021. “Frankly it wrecked my life, my family’s lives. It was the most horrendous thing I’ve ever been through”. Over the years he was forced to pay back £60,000.
He described how his estate agent daughter, who was selling a house, was forced to listen to the owners, unaware of who she was, berating “this terrible, awful man down at the post office, who’s stolen all the pensioners’ money, he’s a rogue, he only got a suspended, he should have been in prison, and thrown away the key’. It’s worse for your family than it was possibly for me.”
He said his lawyer advised him to plead guilty to have a better chance of avoiding a prison sentence. “He said no jury in the land would believe an institution as cherished as the Post Office could possibly have a computer system that is rubbish.” He added of the prison threat: “Believe you me, I was petrified.”
Alison Hall, who ran a post office in Liversedge, West Yorkshire, was suspended after a shortfall of £15,000, and had a false accounting charge overturned three years ago. She said: “I couldn’t tell anybody the truth. It was only my family and close friends who knew the actual truth.” She added it has taken her “a long, long time to talk about it. I switched off.” She added: “It was just horrendous.”
Scott Darlington, from Alderley Edge, who was convicted in 2010, said: “I couldn’t afford to pay for my daughter’s school uniform. I suffered awful stigma and embarrassment and financial distress ever since, and I am glad that things have come to a head and we are able to speak about it now.
He wanted to plead not guilty but was also advised against it “because the Post Office held all the cards”. As a result “I just presumed everybody believed I had my hands in the till”. He added: “I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. How am I supposed to get out if this situation? It’s taken all of these years to get to this point.” Darlington said those at fault now needed to be brought to account “otherwise it won’t feel like justice”.
Varchas Patel, said his father, Vipin, was wrongfully prosecuted in 2011 over a £75,000 shortfall “and his health is completely shattered”. He had not yet received compensation. “His standing in the community went. There were “wanted, dead or alive posters” circulated in his Oxfordshire village. “At one point they even built a four-foot cross [and] placed a wreath on it on the village green, with RIP Vipin,” his son said. “They effectively saw my father as a Post Office robber.”
Tim Brentnall, who ran a post office in Pembrokeshire was forced to pay back £22,500. “I was then prosecuted for false accounting until my conviction was quashed in 2021. My life was left in tatters and my customers and villagers thought I was a fraud.”
Sally Stringer, who operated a rural post office for nearly 20 years, said if there was a shortfall, which was contested, “they take it out of your salary”. She added: “They really are beyond redemption, the Post Office, beyond redemption.”
Maria, who gave only her first name, from Huddersfield, said: “I’m really happy now that the government say that they are listening.”