by An innocent sub-postmaster has allegedly been warned by Post Office investigators to “not touch” her own daughter for 18 months, the Telegraph can reveal.
Tracey Merritt has described how her family was “torn apart” by an “aggressive” investigation launched after Horizon’s faulty IT system falsely showed a cash shortfall.
As her daughter also worked in one of the suspected branches, Ms Merritt was told to cut off all contact while the investigation was ongoing, to avoid collusion.
She was too scared to even explain properly why they had separated communication, she and her partner only found out about their daughter’s pregnancy on Facebook.
It caused a family rift that took years to mend.
“We were really close,” Ms Merritt, 56, said.
“She didn’t understand what was really happening and I couldn’t explain it to her. She moved out and we couldn’t see her for months and months.
“It was devastating.”
The new allegations came after a damning week for the Post Office at the public inquiry, where its investigators were accused of behaving like “mafia gangsters”.
In 2011, Ms Merritt, who ran two branches in Dorset, was wrongly accused of taking £13,500 due to Horizon’s misconduct.
Two investigators, Lisa Allen and Gary Thomas, were sent to question her.
Ms Merritt told the Telegraph they told her she and her daughter would go to prison if she pleaded not guilty.
She said Ms Allen stood outside her cubicle when she went to the toilet at the interview.
“It made me feel uncomfortable, like a criminal,” she said.
“I think it was all part of a corporate bullying game to intimidate you and get you to plead guilty.”
She also alleged that during the search of her home, Ms Allen pointed to a pile of laundry and told Ms Merritt’s partner, David Porter, “I’d turn her in for a new model, if I were you.”
Mr Porter, who worked for Royal Mail as a postman, supported the account, adding: “They were being sarcastic, it was disgusting.”
The inquest previously heard evidence that Mr Thomas described all sub-postmasters as “crooks” in emails relating to a victim which were deleted after his death.
He added that Post Office investigators had been offered cash bonuses for every sub-postmaster convicted during the Horizon scandal.
‘I was afraid’
Ms Merritt was charged with three counts of false accounting, one of theft and one of misappropriating funds, although they were eventually dropped – she suspects because she was preparing to be highly critical of the Horizon system under her protection.
She says that despite the Post Office dropping the charges, they wrongly told her she would be “hearing from the police”.
“I was afraid of that for months,” she said.
However, Ms Merritt lost her business and had to repay £13,500.
She has been living hand-to-mouth ever since.
“Life has been terrible since then. I don’t think there are words to describe it.
“One minute we have a plan and suddenly someone comes and pulls the rug from under your feet.
“I couldn’t get a job because the employer would Google you and see the fees.
“So I could only do agency work like packing cheese at night, just to get money in.”
The worst effect, however, was the impact on her family, with the couple’s daughter, Lisa Porter, moving out to live with her partner.
Another member of the family was hospitalized due to pressure from local boys and now lives in another part of the UK.
Mr Porter said: “We still talk but not like we used to.”
“We were all in each other’s pockets. Then this happened.”
The Telegraph contacted Mr. Thomas and Ms Allen for comments.
A spokesman for the Post Office said it would not comment on individual cases, but added: “We fully share the aims of the public inquiry to find the truth about what happened in the past and to establish accountability. It is for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after considering all the evidence on the issues it is examining.”
By Henry Bodkin
The stress of the prosecution left me registered as disabled, says the sub-posthumous
When Della Robinson became an apprentice in the small manufacturing town of Dukinfield, a former cotton boss, she was convinced she had finally found her dream job.
“I was very proud to be a postmaster. I was at the heart of community life,” she said. “I loved the people who came in. It wasn’t really a job, it was a pleasure.”
But, she has now revealed how the Post Office pursued her through the courts for her own failings, which has now resulted in her being registered disabled.
“The stress of the whole experience contributed to my epilepsy for which I am now registered disabled,” she wrote in her witness statement to the Post Office’s IT Horizon Inquiry. “It would feel like a nightmare when I managed to relive the experience.”
She added: “I’ve lost my confidence, my independence and I’ve developed depression. I was able to manage my epilepsy before.
“It was a huge break to give me back my confidence and give me a new life to leave the Post Office when it was all taken away from me. I feel like I can’t move on.”
In 2006, Miss Robinson, now 55, became a deputy headmistress in the “friendly” Greater Manchester town where she and her partner lived all their lives.
After some “very basic training” – none of which focused on Fujitsu’s now famous Horizon system – she decided to teach herself “a lot of things” to make sure she could get the most out of the job.
She soon had inexplicable deficits. At first it was £10 or £20, but these figures soon began to rise to great sums.
She regularly challenged the mistakes, making calls to the Horizon Helpline three times a week “pleasant but ineffective” as the system had “problem after problem” before the “snowfall” shortfall.
“It was total chaos,” she wrote, explaining how an inspection found £15,500 missing prompting her to suspend and search her home. “This made me panic and I felt so anxious.”
The Post Office insisted she was “the only one” who had problems with Horizon, so she was charged with false accounting and theft of £17,000.
Like many sub-postmasters, she pleaded guilty to false accounting in order to drop the theft charge.
In 2012, she was sentenced to 180 hours of community service and ordered to pay £5,000 costs.
Her efforts to pay the shortfalls meant that a property she and her partner had bought on rental income was repossessed and they had to take out a mortgage on their home.
During Miss Robinson’s community service at Age UK she was constantly reminded of how far she had fallen, through no fault of her own.
“The customers who visited were often the same as those who came into my Post Office,” she wrote. “I felt ashamed that they knew what I was convicted of and thought they would judge me for it.”
Although her conviction was quashed in April 2021, she still struggles to understand the full extent of the “Post Office error” in her life.
“I went from being so happy to very sad. The whole experience took such a toll on me mentally and I don’t believe I will ever recover from the stress and strain that was put on me.”
By Steve Bird
