‘Post Office heads are the Church of England leadership at prayer’ says survivor advocate

Jan 8, 2024 by Jill

by Donna Birrell, Premier:

The battle of Post Office staff to get justice is similar to the plight of survivors of church-related abuse when they’ve tried to hold the Church to account.

That’s according to Martin Sewell, an advocate for survivors and a member of the Church of England’s General Synod. He was speaking to Premier as the Prime Minister called the Post Office Horizon scandal an “appalling miscarriage of justice”.

Rishi Sunak says he wants to speed up the compensation process to be given to any post office managers wrongly convicted of fraud because of a flawed IT system known as Horizon.

The scandal has received widespread coverage over the last few days because of an ITV series called Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It has documented how hundreds of staff have had to clear their names after being convicted of fraud and theft because of faulty software.
The organisation refused to accept the software was to blame for the accounting errors and pursued criminal convictions, which in some cases led to prison sentences.

Now, meetings are being held by the government in an attempt to clear their names.

Martin Sewell told Premier there are so many similarities because survivors have been campaigning for years to get their voices heard:
“If ever you want to believe in providence, the broadcasting of this story at this time makes our life so much simpler because those of us who have been trying to get justice for the victims of the Church of England can do a very simple exercise. We say, look at the Post Office story, and I promise you that for every feature that disturbed you in the Post Office story, I can show you an exact parallel in the Church of England. In fact, the Post Office leadership is the Church of England leadership at prayer.”

Sewell says similarities include survivors being given ‘non-apology apologies’ and that when they asked for documents from the Church, they too have received redacted documents, with all the useful information blotted out.

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