Get SAFE (Support After Financial Exploitation)

One of the hardest realities for people seeking justice after financial harm is this:sometimes the very organisations — and representatives — who should reasonably be expected to tell the truth don’t.And sometimes they don’t even need malicious intent — incompetence, institutional defensiveness, or structural denial is enough.

The newly revealed documents in the Post Office Horizon scandal show this with devastating clarity.

For nearly two decades, sub-postmasters were told — in court, under oath — that:

• Horizon had no bugs capable of causing accounting shortfalls

• Transactions could not be altered remotely

• Any discrepancies must be due to dishonesty or incompetence

Yet documents now show that as early as 2006, the Post Office had a formal commercial agreement with Fujitsu:

• Acknowledging Horizon errors

• Requiring Fujitsu to correct faulty transactions

• Or pay £150 per error if it failed to do so

In other words, the system’s unreliability was contractually recognised — while being publicly denied.

This wasn’t a misunderstanding. It wasn’t a grey area. It wasn’t “unknown at the time”.

And still:

• Over 900 people were wrongly prosecuted

• Lives were financially destroyed

• Some went to prison

• Some died before the truth emerged

Why this matters beyond the Post Office

At Get SAFE, we see this pattern repeatedly across untrustworthy systems:

• Institutions defend the system, not the truth

• Front-line representatives repeat false assurances

• Courts and regulators rely on “authoritative statements” that later unravel

• Victims are portrayed as unreliable — until documents surface years later

Often, the people speaking on behalf of the system:

• Don’t know the full truth

• Aren’t told the full truth

• Or repeat what they’ve been instructed to say, assuming it’s accurate

That doesn’t make the harm any less real.

A core Get SAFE principle

You are not “difficult” for questioning inconsistencies. You are not “obsessive” for asking for evidence. You are not wrong for trusting your lived experience over institutional certainty.

Untrustworthy systems collapse not because victims shout —but because documents, timelines, and contradictions eventually surface.

This is why Get SAFE exists:

• To help you organise evidence

• To slow the system down

• To replace emotional dismissal with structured fact-finding

• To restore agency where authority has failed

If something doesn’t add up — you’re probably right to pause.

You’re not imagining it. You’re noticing the cracks.

And cracks are where the truth eventually comes through.