Cancer victim’s husband hopes for justice as appeals are made in the post office scandal

The husband of a post office branch manager who left with a criminal record has said it would “mean the world to his late wife” if her name is cleared following her tragic death.

More than 700 post office managers in the UK were prosecuted between 1999 and 2015 after postal workers’ faulty Horizon accounting software gave the impression that money was missing from their shops.

Caren Lorimer worked at a branch in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire, for 17 years before a 2008 audit of the post office’s doomed Horizon computer system suggested there was a £38,000 deficit.

She was left with a conviction for embezzlement after pleading guilty to one charge of embezzlement at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court in 2009 and was given a community order requiring 300 hours of unpaid work.

David Lorimer, husband of the late Caren Lorimer, outside the Court of Session.(Image: Jane Barlow/PA Wire.)

Compensation of £15,000 was also ordered, but she was diagnosed with cancer in November 2021 and died four months later. In 2022, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission (SCCRC) received a request to review her conviction.

At a brief hearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh, Lord Justice Clerk Lady Dorrian set an appeal date of June 14 “unless the matters are resolved before then”.

After the hearing, Lorimer’s widower David, 62, said it would mean “the world” if her name were cleared. He said: “It was so hard to live with it, still trying to do your own thing, face your friends. It’s always in the background.

“I wish Caren had known how many people were involved because she thought she was the only one.” Lorimer’s niece Joanne Hughes, 47, said her aunt would be proud of what is now being done to clear her name.

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