Jackie Pearce

POST OFFICE SCANDAL WITHIN A SCANDAL She remortgaged her house to repay money she never took. @PostOffice still refuses to call her conviction unsafe, which is a bold review for a service that ended in a remortgage. Her name is Teju Adedayo. In 1999 she moved to Gillingham in Kent with her then husband and 3 young children to run the Rainham Road branch. Horizon, the Post Office computer system, arrived in 2000 and the problems started straight away. What a thoughtful welcome gift. She says she asked for help and was told to roll the losses over into the next week. Cutting edge customer support, and I would recommend it to nobody. By 2005 the gap sat around £50K. Investigators questioned her in the flat above her own shop with no lawyer present. She says they threatened her with prison, so she made up a confession on the spot. Nothing says fair process like a story invented under threat. Then she remortgaged the house to pay back money she never took. She was convicted of false accounting in 2006. Vandals spray painted thief across her shop door, customers stayed away and the business failed within about a year. Work was out of reach with a conviction, and she hid behind pillars outside the probation office so nobody would see her. A court quashed the conviction on 14 May 2021, 15 years later. Natasha Bernard, the Post Office investigator who questioned her, told the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry @PostOffInquiry in 2023 that she did not believe the confession was reliable, according to reports. It was reliable enough to prosecute a mother, apparently. Teju says that confession kept her out of the compensation others received. In January 2024 the UK Government said she could claim in full or take a £600K offer. Soon after, Post Office told the Inquiry hers was the one case where it still did not accept the conviction was unsafe. Her barrister Edward Henry KC told the Inquiry about it. Consistency is clearly a company value. A court cleared her name in 2021. Post Office is still reading the paperwork. Sources: @JEPnews, @ccrcupdate, @exeterebjl @nickwallis @guardian, others