'We lost everything and ended up in a caravan after Mum was wrongly accused of stealing'

The Watsons were popular and well-loved in their community. But their lives fell apart and they lost their home, their friends and the opportunity of a better future after their mum was accused of taking money from the job she loved so much. Jonathon Hill reports

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KATIE WATSON was a child when her mother was thrown out of the Post Office which had become her life.

Fiona Watson, subpostmistress for the village in the late 1990s and early 2000s, was well-liked by customers, neighbours and the Post Office themselves who had awarded her Post Office of the year in 2000.

They even chose her to be among the first group of Post Offices to pilot the Horizon IT system, daughter Katie, 34, explains from her home in Bridgend.

Weeks into piloting the new system the auditors arrived and Fiona was suspended on suspicion of having her fingers in the till as her life began to unravel.

Weeks after that she was accused of taking tens of thousands of pounds from the Post Office and was ordered to repay the money which had disappeared. While she was under investigation she was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

The Watsons sold their home which adjoined the Post Office in order to pay off the debt and they eventually ended up in a caravan after being ousted by suspicious locals.

Fiona was 44 when she died in 2004 and never got to see her name cleared while Katie says her family have received very little compensation which was an "interim payment" for what they all went through prior to a final settlement, which has still not arrived.

The failings of the Horizon scandal, which was the fault of developer Fujitsu and the Post Office, and the resulting fallout has been well-documented, as has the fact hundreds of subpostmasters and subpostmistresses suffered unimaginable pain resulting in 13 of them taking their own lives. Now, through the group Lost Chances, their children are also coming forward to tell their stories and call for accountability and redress.