FORMER Yetminster postmistress Tracey Merritt is broken.

For 10 long and torturous years she has fought against false charges of fraud and it has taken a massive toll.

If it had not been for the support of her partner, postman Dave Porter, she says: “I would have committed suicide. It’s as simple as that.”

Tracey, 52, who lives in Wincanton, has suffered seven bouts of shingles and painful psoriasis covers her body.

She’s been told that, even with the news she and many other sub postmasters have been exonerated, her health problems linked to the stress of the case will likely continue.

Post Office Ltd has now admitted ‘historical failings’ and a sum of money is due to be paid to the many people caught up in the scandal.

However, any settlement is unlikely to be enough to cover not only the huge financial losses people suffered, but the loss of identity and health.

The firm’s Horizon software just did not work. Worse, it was so error-prone it resulted in massive amounts of money ‘going missing’ from the tills of postmasters up and down the country.

Many, including Tracey, panicked and put thousands of pounds in the tills from their own savings to cover the ‘losses’ caused by the software. Hundreds were prosecuted, innocent people spent time in prison.

READ MORE: West Dorset MP calls for former Post Office boss to lose CBE over Horizon scandal

Today, Tracey has lost everything. Her career, her pension, her savings and now her health. And she’s devastated and angry.

“I feel like the Post Office have been allowed to do what they like to us,” she said. “They just didn’t care. They took my career, I lost the shop attached to the post office. My kids were both badly affected. They were bullied over it. I was spat at in the street.

“Yet we haven’t been able to say anything. For over 10 years now I’ve just been ‘that woman who stole that money from Yetmister’.

“When it first happened they locked me in my office from 8.30 in the morning until after 5.30 at night and tried to force me to confess. They continued to say money was going missing from my till even after the till had been closed down. Afterwards, they tried to make out I was an isolated case, that I was the only one.

“I’m self employed now, and that’s because I could not get a job with those charges hanging over me for all those years. Even though they decided not to press charges they are washing around in the system and get flagged up if I apply for a job. I couldn’t get a mortgage, or a credit card.

“No one has any idea how bad it’s been. I’ve been fighting to clear my name for years and years and years and living with the knowledge I could be arrested at any time.

“I felt such joy on Friday when the Court of Appeal gave their verdict. But I’ll never be the person I was again. It just breaks you. I’ve been destroyed.”

Lord Justice Holroyde, speaking at the Court of Appeal last week, said the Post Office “knew there were serious issues about the reliability of Horizon” and had a “clear duty to investigate”.

But the Post Office “consistently asserted that Horizon was robust and reliable”, he said, and “effectively steamrolled over any sub-postmaster who sought to challenge its accuracy”.

He added: “Post Office Limited’s failures of investigation and disclosure were so egregious as to make the prosecution of any of the ‘Horizon cases’ an affront to the conscience of the court.”

For Tracey, this is the start of yet another battle – this time to get Post Office Ltd to pay a reasonable amount of money to all the people whose lives it destroyed.

By Miranda Robertson
newsdesk@blackmorevale.net