At Least 13 People Died by Suicide Amid U.K. Post Office Scandal, Report Says
Wyn Williams, the retired high court judge who is leading the inquiry, wrote in the report, published on Tuesday, that by his estimation, more than 10,000 people were eligible for some kind of redress and that he expected that number to grow.
The victims range from postal workers held liable for tens or hundreds of pounds in financial discrepancies to those who were wrongly tried, convicted, imprisoned and made to pay back tens of thousands of pounds. They were all blamed for apparent shortfalls at their postal branches across Britain that, it turned out, had actually been caused by a flawed information technology system.
More than 1,000 people were prosecuted from 2000 to at least 2013, but thousands of others were blamed and held responsible, according to the report.
The 166-page volume, the first from the inquiry, which began in September 2020, focuses on the victims, including exasperating efforts to get compensation from the postal service.
The scandal burst into the public eye last year after an ITV television series, 'Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office,' dramatized the stories of the victims. Soon after, the British Parliament passed a law quashing the convictions.
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