Post Office investigators are said to have warned an innocent sub-postmistress not to contact her own daughter for 18 months, the Telegraph can reveal.
Tracey Merritt has described how her family was 'torn apart' by an 'aggressive' investigation launched after the faulty Horizon IT system wrongly showed a cash shortage.
Because her daughter also worked at one of the suspected branches, Ms. Merritt was told to cut off all contact during the investigation to avoid collusion.
Too scared to even properly explain why they had lost communication, she and her partner only found out about their daughter's pregnancy on Facebook.
It caused a rift in the family that took years to repair.
"We were very close," said Mrs. Merritt, 56.
"She didn't really understand what was going on and I couldn't explain it to her. She moved and we weren't able to see her for months.
"It was devastating."
These new allegations follow a devastating week for the Post Office at the public inquiry, where investigators were accused of behaving like "mafia gangsters".
In 2011, Ms Merritt, who ran two branches in Dorset, was wrongly accused of taking £13,500 over the Horizon outage.
Two investigators, Lisa Allen and Gary Thomas, were dispatched to question her.
Mrs Merritt told the Telegraph that they had informed her that she and her daughter would go to prison if she pleaded not guilty.
She said Ms. Allen was standing outside her cubicle when she went to the bathroom during the interview.
"It made me feel uncomfortable, like a criminal," she said.
"I think it was all part of a corporate bullying game to intimidate you into pleading guilty."
She also claimed that during the search, Ms Allen pointed to a pile of laundry and said to Ms Merritt's partner, David Porter, "I'd trade her in for a new model if I were you."
Mr Porter, who worked as a postman for Royal Mail, confirmed the story, adding: "They were sarcastic, it was demeaning."
The story continues
The investigation has previously uncovered evidence that Mr Thomas described all sub-postmasters as "thugs" in emails about a victim who was posthumously acquitted.
He has also said that Post Office investigators were offered cash bonuses for every subpostmaster convicted during the Horizon scandal.
'I lived in fear'
Ms. Merritt was charged with three counts of false accounting, one of theft and one of embezzlement of funds, although these were eventually dropped - she suspects because she was preparing to be highly critical of the Horizon system in her defense.
She says that even though the post office dropped the charges, they wrongly told her she would "hear from the police."
"I feared that for months," she says.
However, Mrs Merritt lost her business and was forced to pay back £13,500.
Since then she has lived from hand to mouth.
"Life since then has been terrible. I don't think there are words to describe it.
"One minute we have a plan and suddenly someone comes and pulls the rug out from under your feet.
'I couldn't get a job because the employer Googled you and saw the costs.
"So I could only do temporary work, like packing cheese in the evening, just to bring in some money."
The worst effect, however, was the impact on her family, when the couple's daughter, Lisa Porter, moved to live with her partner.
Another family member was hospitalized under pressure from local gossip and now lives in another part of Britain.
Mr Porter said: "We are still talking but it is not what it was."
"We used to all be in each other's pockets. Then this happened."
The Telegraph has contacted both Mr Thomas and Ms Allen for comment.
A spokesperson for the Post Office said it would not comment on individual cases, but added: "We fully share the aims of the public inquiry to find the truth about what went wrong in the past and to ensure accountability . It is for the inquiry to reach its own independent conclusions after considering all the evidence on the issues it is investigating."
By Henry Bodkin
Due to the strain of persecution, I was registered as disabled, says sub-postmistress
When Della Robinson became subpostmistress in the small former cotton town of Dukinfield, she was convinced she had finally found her dream job.
"I was very proud to be postmistress. I was the center of community life," she said. "I loved the people who came in. It wasn't really a job, it was fun."
But she has now revealed how the Post Office's persecution through the courts over her own failings worsened her epilepsy, meaning she is now registered as disabled.
"The stress of the whole experience worsened my epilepsy, for which I am now registered as disabled," she wrote in her witness statement to the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry. "I had nightmares reliving the experience."
She added: "I lost my self-confidence and independence and I developed depression. Before, I was able to control my epilepsy.
"It was heartbreaking to leave the Post Office and give me my confidence back and a new lease on life, only to have everything taken away from me. I feel like I can't move forward."
In 2006, Miss Robinson, now 55, became sub-postmistress in the 'friendly' city of Greater Manchester, where she and her partner had lived all their lives.
After "very basic training" - none of which focused on Fujitsu's now infamous Horizon system - she decided to teach herself "a lot of things" to ensure she could get the most out of her job.
She soon encountered inexplicable shortcomings. Initially it was £10 or £20, but those figures soon started to rise to eye-watering amounts.
She regularly questioned the errors and called the 'pleasant but ineffective' Horizon helpline three times a week as the system encountered 'problem after problem' before the shortage 'snowballed'.
"It was complete chaos," she wrote, explaining how an audit found £15,500 missing, prompting a suspension and searches of her home. "This made me panic and I felt so anxious."
The Post Office insisted she was "the only one" experiencing problems with Horizon, so she was charged with false accounting and theft of £17,000.
Like many sub-postmasters, she pleaded guilty to false accounting so they would drop the theft charges.
In 2012 she was sentenced to 180 hours of community service and ordered to pay £5,000 costs.
Her attempts to pay off the deficits resulted in a property she and her partner purchased for rental income being repossessed and them being forced to mortgage their home.
During Miss Robinson's community service at Age UK, she was constantly reminded of how far she had fallen, through no fault of her own.
"The customers who came to visit were often the same as those who came into my post office," she wrote. "I felt ashamed that they knew what I had been convicted of and thought they would judge me for it."
Although her conviction was overturned in April 2021, she still struggles to understand the full extent of the "Post Office mistake" in her life.
"I went from so happy to so desperately sad. The whole experience took so much out of me mentally and I don't believe I will ever fully recover from the stress and strain I endured.
By Steve Vogel
