Cambridgeshire ex-sub-postmistress 'wakes up screaming' at Post Office Horizon scandal memories

• Watch a video report by ITV News Anglia's Tanya Mercer

A former sub-postmistress has said she still suffers night terrors and takes anti-depressants after the Post Office IT scandal that led to some of her colleagues being suspended, prosecuted and jailed.

Grandmother Jennifer O’Dell, 72, ran the Great Staughton post office for 50 years and was well known in the Cambridgeshire village.

But after her account began to show a shortfall of more than £9,600 in 2009, her account was closed on 6 January 2010.

An inquiry into the IT scandal is underway and examining whether the Post Office knew about the faults in the Horizon computer system.

Ms O'Dell told ITV News Anglia that the scandal had had a devastating effect on her life and now suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as a result of her ordeal.  

"I get terrible night terrors, two or three a week," she said.

"My husband has to wake me up because I'm screaming.

"I now suffer from high blood pressure, [and] because the inquiry is going on and it's bringing it all back to me I have to take anti-depressants. It is just devastating.

"I still get very angry, it is the very frustration of it. I knew I hadn't done anything but nobody would listen to me."

The grandmother-of-eight is among more than 700 sub-postmasters and sub-postmistresses who were wrongfully suspended between 2000 and 2014, based on information from the Horizon IT system.

However, in December 2019 a High Court judge ruled that Horizon’s system contained a number of “bugs, errors and defects” and there was a “material risk” that shortfalls in Post Office branch accounts were caused by the system.

Ms O'Dell said: "Every time I rang the Post Office for help [they said] 'no, pay the money back', all the time. They didn't want to hear me, they didn't want to listen to me. So I was on my own.

"The intimidation, the bullying when you're at your lowest ebb and you've got somebody pounding away at you, [telling you] 'sign this to say that you did take the money'.

"It was dreadful, it was terrible. I never did sign."

Ms O’Dell was interviewed in 2010 by Post Office investigation officers John Longman and Lisa Allen, and in 2015 by a director of the organisation at the time, Angela Van Den Bogerd.

Giving evidence to the public inquiry in February she said: “In both of those interviews, it was just like a kangaroo court. I walked in, and their body language was like: ‘She’s guilty.'”

She criticised Post Office senior executives and admitted she had contemplated taking her own life and saw old friends crossing the road to avoid her.

Now, she says she just wants those responsible to be held to account.

"The people in the Post Office high up must have known, they must have done, and that is what has made us even more angry that they have walked away from it.

"They have been shuffled out of the back door to other fantastic jobs, with fantastic pensions, bonuses. They need to be made responsible, they need to be taken to court like some of us were."

Allison Henderson use to run a small post office in Worsted in Norfolk. In 2006 she noticed her accounts were not balancing. The first audit showed an £18,000 shortfall. 

She was suspended, interviewed under caution and then charged with theft and false accounting. After several court appearances Ms Henderson was advised to plead guilty to false accounting to avoid a jail sentence.

She estimates she has spent more than £25,000 paying back money she did not take and legal fees fighting a crime she did not commit. 

"It's taken an awful lot of my life away. It really, really has. I'll never get that back," she said.

"I think I will always be this emotional wreck talking about it.  No amount of money or compensation can ever fix that."

The Post Office made an official apology in 2021.

It told ITV News Anglia in a statement: "We are sincerely sorry for past events and providing compensation to victims of the Horizon Scandal is a priority.

"Interim payments of up to £100,000 have been expedited, ahead of final compensation, to the majority of people whose convictions have been overturned and will continue for others."

The inquiry continues.