Subpostmistress remembers ‘Terror’ of supporting her young children during the Horizon IT scandal on new e -mail podcast

Former subpostmistress Pamela Church revealed that she was suffering of panic attacks and had the feeling that she ‘had abandoned everyone’ after she had gone bankrupt because of the horizon the scandal on a new e -mail podcast.

About the latest episode of ‘The apple and the tree’Pamela, 47, daughter Rebekah Foot, 28, told about her experience losing everything after she was involved in what is seen as the greatest judicial miscarriage in British history.

The podcast, organized by Pastor Richard Coles, brings parents and their adult children together to answer questions about their shared family history.

The Horizon IT scandal was a defective computer system with post office that wrongly showed financial deficits in branches throughout the country.

The mistake led to more than 700 subpostmasters being wrongly prosecuted and convicted of theft and fraud between 1999 and 2015.

Pamela Church: ‘They said they would take my company away from me. I couldn’t breathe. I felt that I would die. ‘ Listen here

The full episode of the Apple & The Tree with Pamela Church and her daughter Rebekah Foot is now available. Listen here

“I remember being seen as a pillar of the community,” said Pamela.

‘But once everything happened, everyone thought we were Dodgy. We were closed in 2015.

“It’s bankrupt. I tried to keep my children away as much as possible, but I started to suffer really bad panic attacks. ‘

The mother-of-three told you to deposit in the toilet for her young daughter because of the stress to be pursued for tens of thousands of pounds.

The technical error may have hit 25,000 postmasters, but less than 2500 have been compensated.

She said to the podcast: ‘It came at a very bad point where I couldn’t continue. I felt that I was a huge disappointment.

“I had this huge panic attack – I was in the bathroom. My young daughter saw me on the floor and then took himself to school.

“My daughter said to the receptionist of the school: ‘Mummy is bad, she’s not good and I can’t live without her life.

‘Then I went to the doctors and she forbidden me fluoxetine. It stopped the panic attacks and I started to see a future again.

Pamela, 47 told daughter Rebekah Foot (photo), 28, about her experience with losing everything after she was engaged in the horizon the scandal

Pamela Church: ‘I was bankrupt, I had no money, no company – at least I still had my children and my partner. They set up me to move forward. ‘ Listen here

‘But everything was taken away: I was bankrupt, I had no money, no company – at least I still had my children and my partner. They set up me to move forward. ‘

Pamela remembered that something noticed that was wrong when she led both the old and the new accounting systems at her post office in Noord -Wales and the discrepancies of thousands of pounds appeared.

Despite its protests, the post office threatened to grab her company unless she invented the shortage.

‘My first panic attack, £ 10,000 was missing from the post office and they called me and told me that I had to pay it.

“They said that if I didn’t, they took my company from me. I couldn’t breathe. I felt that I would die.

‘I collapsed with my daughter Evie in my arms. When I woke up, I saw my daughter playing in a pool of my blood. ‘

The truth about the scandal was caused by persistent legal action by subpostmasters that took the first High Court case against the post office in 2019, Saving a settlement of £ 43 million.

It received widespread public attention in January 2024 after the ITV drama ‘Mr Bates vs brought the post office’ the issue to millions of viewers.

Pamela said that she has not yet completed all the paperwork for her compensation, because she ‘does not want to return’ memories of the scandal.

“I’m currently in a good kind of place,” she said.

“I don’t want to bring it back. But I know that if I want my claim to move forward, I have to finish all this paperwork. I will do it only in my own time. ‘

To listen to the full episode, where Pamela remembers that her post office was robbed when she was five months pregnant, look for ‘The Apple & The Tree’ now, where you get your podcasts.