More than two decades after she was forced out of the Post Office branch she ran with her late husband, Betty Brown stood at Windsor Castle on Tuesday (June 2) to receive an OBE.
The 93-year-old, believed to be the oldest surviving victim of the miscarriage of justice, used the occasion to pay tribute to fellow sub-postmasters who did not live to see their names cleared and to renew calls for full and timely justice for those still awaiting compensation.
"The reason that I'm here is very sad and I don't forget that. All the heart ache of the families that this has destroyed, the heart ache of children left with nothing, that still hurts, it'll always hurt," she added.
Brown said she was "honoured and humbled" to be made an OBE, adding she had finally "been heard by the system" and was "pleased that the public are still learning about this".
"A lot of them think we've had compensation, we haven't had a penny compensation. We've had what they call redress, which means they've given back the money to us that they stole from us," she said.
While receiving the honour, Brown reiterated the need of speedy andfair justice.
"I said to him...would you tell your prime minister and your ministers that justice has no cost...There is no cost to justice. Doesn't matter what it costs, justice must be done," she added.
Brown was one of hundreds of sub-postmasters wrongly accused of stealing or false accounting between 1999 and 2015 after a faulty IT system called Horizon made it look like money was missing from branch accounts.
She was also one of the original 555 victims who took part in the landmark group legal action led by Sir Alan against the Post Office. Both Brown and Sir Alan Bates were part of the Group Litigation Order compensation scheme, and those claimants were offered the option of taking a fixed sum of £75,000 or pursuing their own settlement.
The scandal has been described as one of the widest miscarriages of justice in the British legal history. Thousands were forced to make up for the alleged losses at their branches across the UK.