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The widow of a Post Office manager who died fighting for his reputation told how she locked herself in the bathroom and cut off all her hair after being hit with a confiscation order.
Karen Wilson gave evidence at a public inquiry into the Post Office IT scandal, the most widespread miscarriage of justice in British history.
Between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 sub-postmasters were convicted of serious offences including fraud and some were sent to prison.
READ MORE: Redditch widow says postmaster husband was ‘broken’ by false accusations
Due to failures linked to computer system Horizon, Post Office bosses pursued charges against innocent workers across the country, including in the Midlands.
Many found themselves with criminal records and shunned by their communities.
In April 2021, appeal judges at the Royal Courts of Justice quashed the convictions of 39 former sub-postmasters.
A total of 72 former workers have had their names cleared but some died before they were given the opportunity.
They include Julian Wilson, who ran a post office at Astwood Bank, on the outskirts of Redditch. He died of bowel cancer in August 2016 before his conviction was overturned.
After he was found guilty of false accounting, Julian was handed 300 hours of community service, made to clean graves and left unable to find work.
On top of the humiliation, the financial penalties for the couple were huge. Karen was forced to pawn her engagement ring and sell items in a car boot sale.
She insists the disease that claimed her husband’s life had its roots in the stress he endured so unnecessarily.
(Image: Birmingham Mail)
Today, Wednesday, February 16, she stood with her right hand on the bible before sitting down next to a picture of her beloved late husband.
She told how the pair were married on July 13 1985, the same day as Live Aid, and described their wedding as “fabulous”.
Julian worked as the director of a company designing specialist lighting for hotels and airports, a job that took him all over the world.
But one day, wanting to spend more time with his family, he made a decision that would change the course of his life.
Karen, 67, said today: “I picked him up from the airport one Friday night and he said he was getting a bit fed up of living out of a suitcase. He had been doing it for 20 years.
“He said he would like to buy a business and make money. It was a light-hearted conversation in the car coming back but he took it quite seriously.”
Karen, an ex-police constable at West Merica Police, later joined him working at the Post Office. The pair pulled the money together after eating into savings and taking out a loan.
“I was a bit apprehensive at first about a husband and wife working together,” Karen went on.
“He trained me up and the rest is history really.”
But it wasn’t long before the problems started. Karen said the pair would sometimes be in the Post Office until 10pm trying to balance the books.
She described Julian as “very methodical” and explained how Post Office bosses had told him the issue would “sort itself out”.
But on September 11 2008 he was suspended after auditors found an unexplainable £27,911 shortfall due to the botched IT system.
Four days later, investigators arrived at Karen and Julian’s home.
“He wasn’t worried about them coming into the house,” Karen said. “They went through everything including the garden shed and they kept saying to Julian: ‘Where is the money? Where is the jewellery? Where are the holidays?”
Despite the investigation, which saw Julian charged with both theft and false accounting, Karen was asked to run the Post Office for just £5-an-hour.
She described the intense pressure on Julian – an innocent man – to admit he had taken the money. After pleading guilty to false accounting, the theft charge was dropped.
“They said he would get a custodial sentence if he didn’t admit to two counts of false accounting,” Karen went on. “It was the worst of two evils. He said he couldn’t go to prison and I don’t think he could have.”
Even though half the village turned up to court with references, he was made to carry out community service at a local graveyard.
Karen recalled: “We sat in the car afterwards and I just said to him: ‘I can’t believe this’. It didn’t feel like British justice.
“He had all the evidence in six boxes but he wasn’t allowed to stand up and give evidence.”
But it was the financial troubles that impacted both Julian and Karen’s health the most.
After being slapped with a confiscation order, Karen said the pair were told to “live off the money you have stolen”.
She went on: “Everybody chipped in but you have a certain amount of pride when you have never been in debt.
“I walked into town one afternoon with 30 years of jewellery and sold it all for £900. I didn’t tell him for a few weeks. He wanted to know how I had paid the mortgage.”
Fighting back tears, Karen said Julian was a talented musician and loved sport. But he suffered a slow decline and struggled with other jobs, pushing him to the brink of suicide.
When asked about her own health, Karen said she had a meltdown after the confiscation order.
She said: “I locked myself in the bathroom and cut all my hair off because I didn’t know what to do.
“I’m not an angry lady. Normally I’m quite calm and collected. When you’ve got all this misplaced anger you don’t know where to put it.
“He would go in the conservatory and just fall apart and talk about suicide. I used to say to him ‘no that’s not going to happen'”.
When Julian died aged just 67, Karen promised him she would carry on fighting for justice.
Asked what she would like from the Post Office, she explained she wanted to know the “who and why”.
She said: “Why did they do it? Why did they not listen to the people who were running these businesses? I would like to see some accountability.
“At the moment there is nobody other than the named people who have been at the trials.
“Who signed all these prosecutions off? Did nobody ever say this isn’t right? Did nobody ever do that?
“He had worse consequences than if he was tried for murder. That’s how I feel. I want some answers.”
