‘They ripped the life out of me’: ex-Post Office staff tell inquiry of stress of IT scandal
Former Post Office workers have broken down in tears recounting the depression and PTSD they suffered after being caught up in the organisation’s IT scandal.
More than 700 Post Office operators were prosecuted for theft and false accounting between 2000 and 2014 after the organisation’s flawed Horizon IT system incorrectly suggested there were financial shortfalls.
On Friday, former worker Jennifer O’Dell said she had considered killing herself and suffered from recurring night terrors. She was accused of stealing almost £10,000 from a post office in Cambridgeshire.
Speaking at the end of the first week of the independent inquiry into the scandal, O’Dell said she had researched how to take her own life, as well as suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
She said: “I went to some very dark places, extremely dark places. I even worked out how to commit suicide. I had to have anti-depressants. I had to have sleeping pills. I had night terrors where my husband had to wake me up. And it wasn’t just once every so often, it was two or three times a week. I had high blood pressure as well.
“After the court case in December, I suffered from PTSD and had to have counselling. That was awful. I hadn’t been at war. I hadn’t lost a limb. They caused that.”
O’Dell was suspended and, although not prosecuted, she said months of uncertainty left her expecting to “wake up to a court summons”.
She said: “I want those people brought to justice. I want them to be persecuted and that’s not at all like me. I want them to say: ‘Yes, we did it, we didn’t tell the truth on oath.’ I want them to say sorry.”
The inquiry also heard a written statement on behalf of Guy Vinall, who ran a post office in Funtington, near Chichester
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