Dozens contemplated suicide over UK Post Office scandal, says official report

Irish Times

08-07-2025

Dozens of people contemplated taking their own life because of their experiences of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal, an official report has found.
More than 1,000 post office operators wrongly accused of taking money from their branches because of faulty software.
Bankruptcy, divorce and vitriolic abuse from the public were among the other 'harrowing' impacts laid bare in a long-awaited report from the inquiry on Tuesday.
The inquiry chairman, retired judge Sir Wyn Williams, said at least 59 people 'contemplated suicide at various points in time' and 'attributed this to their experiences with Horizon and/or the Post Office'.
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He described it as a 'common experience' among both people who were prosecuted and those who were not and said 10 of the 59 had attempted to take their own lives, some on more than one occasion.
His report said the families of six former postmasters and seven others who were not postmasters claimed they had taken their own lives 'as a consequence of Horizon showing an illusory shortfall in branch accounts'.
Mr Williams said it was a 'real possibility' the 13 had died as a result of their experiences of the scandal.
He said: 'I should stress that whist I cannot make a definitive finding that there is a causal connection between the deaths of all 13 persons and Horizon, I do not rule it out as a real possibility.
'It is also possible that more than 13 persons, as indicated by the Post Office in response to the inquiry's requests in March 2025, died by suicide but that some deaths have not been reported to the Post Office or the inquiry.'
Mr Williams's report told of the range of ways in which the devastating fallout of the scandal affected Post Office workers and their families, from investigations to convictions.
He wrote: 'Nearly all the persons interviewed under caution by Post Office investigators will have been in wholly unfamiliar territory and they will have found the experience to be troubling at best and harrowing at worst.'
For those who were jailed 'life may have seemed close to unbearable' at times, while others who were convicted but not imprisoned often faced 'hostile and abusive behaviour from members of the public in the locality'.
The convicted people who gave evidence to the inquiry told of the 'psychiatric and psychological problems which dogged them throughout the Post Office's audit and investigation process, the criminal process and thereafter'.
Mr Williams said a 'significant number' of those prosecuted and convicted said they contemplated self-harm, while 19 people said they had abused alcohol 'and attributed this to their experiences with Horizon and/or the Post Office'.
It is thought approximately 1,000 people have been wrongly prosecuted and convicted across the UK between 1999 and 2015, with somewhere between 50 and 60 people prosecuted but not convicted, Mr Williams said.
Those who were acquitted still faced being 'ostracised in their local community', the report noted.
Postmasters who were suspended or had their contracts terminated 'suffered heightened distress and worry' over their loss of business, income and the effects on their family, it added.
If branches closed they 'became the object of local hostility and adverse local publicity'.
Many convicted postmasters were declared bankrupt, described by the report as a 'complicating factor in a number of claims brought by claimants'.
Some evidence laid out the 'catalogue of misfortunes which befell' postmasters and their families.
The report said: 'Wives, husbands, children and parents endured very significant suffering in the form of distress, worry and disruption (to home life, in employment and in education).
'In a number of cases relationships with spouses and partners broke down and ended in divorce or separation.'
The report said that on many occasions 'immediate family members were forced to endure vitriolic abuse from persons within their local or cultural community'.
Elderly parents had provided financial support using their savings in some cases to help children who were sub-postmasters, with the report adding: 'Some of those convicted spoke of their immense regret that parents had not lived to see their convictions being quashed.'
The inquiry chairman also paid tribute to the 'fortitude and determination' of spouses and other close relatives of those postmasters who died before having their convictions quashed on appeal. - PA/Guardian