Sarah’s front room is filled with pictures of her smiling baby. He’s now 18 months old. But for almost a year, she was investigated on suspicion of illegally trying to abort him.
In January 2023, Sarah (not her real name) had just delivered her baby prematurely. She called 999 but before paramedics turned up, police came knocking at her door.
“The front room was just full of police,” Sarah tells Sky News. “I felt like a criminal.”
Her pregnancy was unplanned and she had considered a termination. She went to an abortion clinic but was told she was three days over the legal limit of 24 weeks.
“I wasn’t expecting to be that far gone,” she says. “I was hardly showing. It was a massive shock.”
When she got home, she panicked and started searching adoption, and adoption to friends and family, online. She even put abortion pills in her online shopping basket – but never bought them.
After a few days, Sarah came to terms with the pregnancy. But on the Monday morning, she wasn’t feeling very well and called in sick to work.
“Throughout the day, I’d had back pain and wasn’t getting any better,” she says. “And then at about seven in the evening, eight maybe, I went upstairs to the toilet… and he was here.
“I rang my husband who was downstairs to say ‘I think I’ve just had a baby’.”
He was born at 25 weeks, almost three months premature. He wasn’t breathing. His parents wrapped him in a towel and took him downstairs.
“He was blue in colour, there was no movement. It was horrible,” Sarah says.
Image: Sarah (right) told Sky News she’s still traumatised by the year-long investigation
When her husband rang 999, the paramedics gave CPR instructions on the phone. But before they arrived, the police came.
It was the start of an investigation that would last a year.
The police force involved said it “attended to assist medical professionals and ensure necessary statutory processes were followed” – as they would “with any involving the potential for the sudden unexplained death of a baby or a child”.
“It was quickly identified that there was information to suggest a criminal offence may have been committed,” the force added.
Sarah’s case was dropped earlier this year and is no longer active.
Her story comes as the British Society of Abortion Care Providers and the British Pregnancy Advice Service (BPAS) – one of the main licensed abortion clinics – today issue a statement saying women under investigation on suspicion of illegally abortions are “incredibly distressed” that a vote on abortion law won’t take place this parliamentary term.
“As soon as the new parliament returns in July, it must urgently act,” BPAS says.
Before the general election was called, MPs were due to debate abortion law.
Amendments to the Criminal Justice Bill aimed at stopping women facing criminal sanction for ending their pregnancy had been proposed.
‘A national scandal’
“There’s an increasing number of women who are facing investigation and suspicion that they have had an illegal abortion,” says Jonathan Lord, an NHS consultant gynaecologist and co-chair of the British Society of Abortion Care Providers.
Anecdotally, he knows of up to 100 women who have been investigated in the last year, which he says is “unprecedented”.
“What these women are going through and the horrific way they’ve been treated… it’s a national scandal,” he adds.
Image: Some women have been treated in a ‘horrific’ way, says Dr Lord
Dr Lord says he’s seen a rise in police approaching abortion providers for records and information about women who had considered an abortion.
Responding to police inquiries has become a “major” part of his job.
“In no other field of medicine would you expect the police to ask for medical records, they are confidential for a reason,” he tells Sky News.
The official numbers are lower than what Dr Lord reports, but still at record levels.
Between 2022 and 2023, 29 people in England and Wales were recorded as under police investigation on suspicion of procuring an illegal abortion – the highest in two decades.
Image: Police investigations into abortions are at the highest levels in two decades
And Freedom of Information data for Sky News shows there’s been a rise in the number of people taken to court for this offence.
Between 2010 and 2019, 17 cases reached court in England and Wales. Only six of those cases resulted in a conviction. That’s about a third.
But in just a few years, between 2020 and 2023, 11 cases went to court. Almost half of those (five) resulted in a conviction.
An illegal abortion is any attempt to procure a miscarriage where it’s not signed off by two doctors, or the medication hasn’t been prescribed.
Experts can’t fully explain what is fuelling this but suggest a combination of factors might be at play, including increased police awareness of the ease of “at home” abortions.
‘Prosecutions not in public interest’
In England, Wales and Scotland, it is legal to terminate a pregnancy up to 24 weeks in an NHS clinic or approved abortion provider, with the permission of two doctors. In Northern Ireland, abortion was fully decriminalised in 2020.
Women can have a surgical abortion or they can take two pills – known as a medical termination.
Since COVID, the “pills by post” scheme became a permanent measure. It means both pills can be taken at home in the early stages of pregnancy following an online telephone consultation.
Image: Misoprostol is one of the pills used legally in the UK to terminate a pregnancy
Having a termination outside of these circumstances in England and Wales is illegal under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. The maximum penalty is life in prison.
“I think abortion care should come under the umbrella of healthcare,” says Lucie Baylis, an unplanned pregnancy nurse at Royal Cornwall NHS hospital.
“I don’t think there is any public interest in prosecuting women who seek abortion outside of the legal parameters.”
Earlier this year, new guidance was issued by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists urging medics not to report patients if they suspect a woman of illegally ending their own pregnancy.
Image: Ms Baylis says ‘it seems mad’ women are pursued by police
In the first official guidance issued of its kind, it says a healthcare worker must “justify” any disclosure of patient data or face “potential fitness to practise proceedings”.
Ms Baylis said “it seems mad” women should be passed to police or authorities rather than handled as a healthcare patient.
‘Law should follow the science’
But others think moves to change the law are “irresponsible” and “would only have the impact of incentivising women to have late-term abortions by themselves, with no medical oversights,” says Calum Miller, a doctor and medical ethics professor at the University of Oxford.
“The current law acts as a deterrent to stop this,” he says.
“Data from other countries is very clear that when you make a certain kind of abortion legal, it does become more common.
“As an example, in New Zealand, there was a 43% increase in abortions after 20 weeks,” he says.
Dr Miller feels proposed amendments have the aim of “legalising abortion up until birth, which isn’t in step with British public opinion”.
Image: Dr Miller says proposed law changes aren’t in step with public opinion
In an October YouGov poll, 25% of people said they thought the current 24-week legal limit was too late and should be reduced, while 49% said it was about right, and 6% believed it should be extended.
“Abortion laws should follow the science. And it should say at the very least that if a baby is potentially viable, abortion should not be an option,” says Dr Miller.
While Sarah accepts why she was investigated – for looking for pills online – she is still struggling with the impact the investigation has had on her life.
“It never leaves your mind,” she says.
“Having to live with it for 50-odd weeks… You think ‘am I going to get a knock on the door? Are we going to get taken away?'”
The police force involved with Sarah’s case told us: “Immediate action was taken to secure evidence to ensure that a thorough investigation could take place.
“This was a complex investigation, requiring extensive forensic and medical evidence, and unfortunately these kind of enquiries take time.”
The National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Crown Prosecution Service also say these investigations are “rare” and “would only be initiated where there is credible information to suggest criminal activity… often as a result of concerns raised from medical professionals”.
They say they come with “unique” factors and “personal circumstances” that are “carefully” considered.
At least 13 people may have taken their own lives after being accused of wrongdoing based on evidence from the Horizon IT system that the Post Office and developers Fujitsu knew could be false, the public inquiry has found.
A further 59 people told the inquiry they considered ending their lives, 10 of whom tried on at least one occasion, while other postmasters and family members recount suffering from alcoholism and mental health disorders including anorexia and depression, family breakup, divorce, bankruptcy and personal abuse.
Writing in the first volume of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry report, chairman Sir Wyn Williams concludes that this enormous personal toll came despite senior employees at the Post Office knowing the Horizon IT system could produce accounts “which were illusory rather than real” even before it was rolled out to branches.
Sir Wyn said: “I am satisfied from the evidence that I have heard that a number of senior, and not so senior, employees of the Post Office knew or, at the very least, should have known that Legacy Horizon was capable of error… Yet, for all practical purposes, throughout the lifetime of Legacy Horizon, the Post Office maintained the fiction that its data was always accurate.”
Referring to the updated version of Horizon, known as Horizon Online, which also had “bugs errors and defects” that could create illusory accounts, he said: “I am satisfied that a number of employees of Fujitsu and the Post Office knew that this was so.”
The first volume of the report focuses on what Sir Wyn calls the “disastrous” impact of false accusations made against at least 1,000 postmasters, and the various redress schemes the Post Office and government has established since miscarriages of justice were identified and proven.
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‘It stole a lot from me’
Recommendations regarding the conduct of senior management of the Post Office, Fujitsu and ministers will come in a subsequent report, but Sir Wyn is clear that unjust and flawed prosecutions were knowingly pursued.
“All of these people are properly to be regarded as victims of wholly unacceptable behaviour perpetrated by a number of individuals employed by and/or associated with the Post Office and Fujitsu from time to time and by the Post Office and Fujitsu as institutions,” he says.
What are the inquiry’s recommendations?
Calling for urgent action from government and the Post Office to ensure “full and fair compensation”, he makes 19 recommendations including:
• Government and the Post Office to agree a definition of “full and fair” compensation to be used when agreeing payouts • Ending “unnecessarily adversarial attitude” to initial offers that have depressed the value of payouts, and ensuring consistency across all four compensation schemes • The creation of a standing body to administer financial redress to people wronged by public bodies • Compensation to be extended to close family members of those affected who have suffered “serious negative consequences” • The Post Office, Fujitsu and government agreeing a programme for “restorative justice”, a process that brings together those that have suffered harm with those that have caused it
Regarding the human impact of the Post Office’s pursuit of postmasters, including its use of unique powers of prosecution, Sir Wyn writes: “I do not think it is easy to exaggerate the trauma which persons are likely to suffer when they are the subject of criminal investigation, prosecution, conviction and sentence.”
He says that even the process of being interviewed under caution by Post Office investigators “will have been troubling at best and harrowing at worst”.
The report finds that those wrongfully convicted were “subject to hostile and abusive behaviour” in their local communities, felt shame and embarrassment, with some feeling forced to move.
Detailing the impact on close family members of those prosecuted, Sir Wyn writes: “Wives, husbands, children and parents endured very significant suffering in the form of distress, worry and disruption to home life, in employment and education.
“In a number of cases, relationships with spouses broke down and ended in divorce or separation.
“In the most egregious cases, family members themselves suffered psychiatric illnesses or psychological problems and very significant financial losses… their suffering has been acute.”
The report includes 17 case studies of those affected by the scandal including some who have never spoken publicly before. They include Millie Castleton, daughter of Lee Castleton, one of the first postmasters prosecuted.
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Three things you need to know about Post Office report
She told the inquiry how her family being “branded thieves and liars” affected her mental health, and contributed to a diagnosis of anorexia that forced her to drop out of university.
Her account concludes: “Even now as I go into my career, I still find it so incredibly hard to trust anyone, even subconsciously. I sabotage myself by not asking for help with anything.
“I’m trying hard to break this cycle but I’m 26 and am very conscious that I may never be able to fully commit to natural trust. But my family is still fighting. I’m still fighting, as are many hundreds involved in the Post Office trial.”
Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said the inquiry’s report “marks an important milestone for sub-postmasters and their families”.
He added that he was “committed to ensuring wronged sub-postmasters are given full, fair, and prompt redress”.
“The recommendations contained in Sir Wyn’s report require careful reflection, including on further action to complete the redress schemes,” Mr Reynolds said.
“Government will promptly respond to the recommendations in full in parliament.”
The long-awaited first report from the Post Office Horizon scandal inquiry lays bare not just the devastating personal toll of one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in British legal history, but also the slow-motion failure of the government and the Post Office to deliver meaningful redress.
Sir Wyn Williams’s first report documents with stark clarity how hundreds of sub-postmasters, wrongly accused of theft and fraud due to the faulty Horizon IT system, lost their livelihoods, homes, reputations – and in some cases, their lives.
Thirteen people are believed to have taken their lives as a result of the scandal.
Fifty-nine contemplated it.
It talks of alcohol addiction, serious mental illness, and bankruptcy – all tearing families apart and leaving behind a heartbreaking legacy.
But if the scandal was a failure of justice, the response to it has become a second injustice.
More on Post Office Scandal
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Critical on a technical level
The report is critical, on a fairly technical level, about the complexity, delays, and bureaucracy of redress schemes that have left victims still waiting years for full compensation.
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‘It stole a lot from me’
Hundreds of whom have died before seeing “full and fair redress”.
While Sir Wyn is fair to the government and the Post Office in stating that he believes their commitment to delivering the above has been in “good faith”, he concludes this has not been achieved for every victim, describing “formidable” difficulties.
There are 19 recommendations – including a push to ensure consistency across all four redress schemes, with an agreed and public definition of “full and fair redress”.
Compensation
Among them, that family members of victims should be compensated, and a permanent public body established to manage future redress schemes in future.
Additionally, Fujitsu, the Post Office, and the government should engage in formal restorative justice programmes.
There was also a flavour of what is to come in the final report later this year or next.
The report has found that both Fujitsu and Post Office staff knew Horizon could produce false data but concealed this, maintaining a false narrative of accuracy.
One of the most important things now, though, is how and when the government, Post Office, and Fujitsu respond officially.
Sir Wyn has also set a deadline of 10 October 2025 for that.
The victims of this scandal have waited long enough.
There was a “wholesale and general failure” to address the risks posed by Axel Rudakubana before the Southport attack, the chairman of the public inquiry into the murders has said.
In his opening statement at Liverpool Town Hall, Sir Adrian Fulford said the teenager’s “known predilection for knife crime” suggests it was “far from an unforeseeable catastrophic event”.
The former vice president of the Court of Appeal said Rudakubana’s actions “impose the heaviest of burdens” to investigate how it was possible for him to cause “such devastation”.
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‘We need to understand what went wrong’
The 18-year-old murdered Elsie Dot Stancomb, seven, Bebe King, six, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, at a Taylor Swift-themed class on 29 July last year.
He also injured eight other children and two adults at the Hart Space in the Merseyside seaside town, with Sir Adrian describing the attack as “one of the most egregious crimes in our country’s history”.
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‘We don’t want Elsie forgotten’
The public inquiry, announced by Home Secretary Yvette Cooper in January, will look into whether the attack could or should have been prevented, given what was known about the killer.
Rudakubana, who was born in Cardiff, had been referred to the government’s anti-extremism Prevent scheme three times before the murders, including over research into school shootings and the London Bridge terror attack.
He had also accessed online material about explosives, warfare, knives, assassination and an al Qaeda training manual.
A rapid review into his contact with Prevent found his case should have been kept open and that he should have been referred to Channel, another anti-terror scheme.
Rudakubana was twice caught with a knife and managed to hoard other blades, as well as a bow and arrow, machetes, a sledgehammer and the deadly toxin ricin at his home.
He bought the 20cm chef’s knife used to carry out the attack using a Virtual Private Network (VPN).
Sir Adrian said he did not want to pre-judge the outcome of the inquiry.
But he added: “These factors, if correct and when taken together, tend to suggest that far from being an unforeseeable catastrophic event, the perpetrator posed a very serious and significant risk of violent harm, over a number of years, with a particular and known predilection for knife crime.
“Furthermore, his ability, unhindered, to access gravely violent material on the internet, to order knives online when underage, and then to leave home unsupervised to commit the present attack, speaks to a wholesale and general failure to intervene effectively, or indeed at all, to address the risks that he posed.”
Sir Adrian said the inquiry will examine decisions taken in light of Rudakubana’s “deteriorating and deeply troubling behaviour” to identify “without fear or favour” all of the relevant failings.
He said he aims to make recommendations to ensure the best chance of stopping others “who may be drawn to treating their fellow human beings in such a cruel and inhuman way”.
Rudakubana, 18, was jailed for a minimum of 52 years in January and is being investigated over an alleged attack on a prison officer at Belmarsh prison in May.
Sir Adrian said he would be referred to by his initials or as “the perpetrator” during the inquiry and asked the media not to show his “terrifying and singularly distressing” police mugshot to avoid causing distress to the survivors and their families, who have been granted anonymity.
The surviving children, many whom were under the age of 10, are “bravely trying to cope with school life in the face of what they have suffered,” he added.
Sir Adrian asked those in the room to stand for a minute’s silence for the victims.
Some of those whose children were injured will speak at a hearing on Wednesday before the inquiry is adjourned to 8 September, with the first phase expected to last until November.
It will then move on to a second phase next year to “consider the wider issues of children and young people being drawn into extreme violence”.
Rachael Wong, director at law firm Bond Turner, representing the three bereaved families, said: “We know that nothing the inquiry reveals or subsequently recommends will change the unimaginable loss felt by the families of Elsie, Alice and Bebe, but we all now have a responsibility to ensure that something like this never happens again.
“We will be doing all we can to assist the chair through the inquiry and uncover the truth.
“It is only through intense public scrutiny that real change can be effected.”
Sefton Council is asking people not to leave flowers near schools or the scene of the attack to mark the anniversary later this month, but to donate to local charitable causes instead.
There will be a three-minute silence and flags will be lowered to half-mast on public buildings around the Liverpool city region.
“We fully understand that many of us still need to grieve and to mark the day,” the council said in an open letter.
“Our colleagues have been working with faith and community leaders to identify local spaces where you can go, within your neighbourhood, to pay tribute, whether this be to say a prayer, light a candle, speak to someone or quietly reflect in a way that feels right for you.”