Maybe there is some misunderstanding by ‘Liz’, and now ‘Seicolegwr’, as to the purpose of our site? It is not and was never intended to be a FORUM, although they have both, we believe disingenuously and artfully, posted comments on Amazon to the effect that they cannot comment on our site, and by this means they have also evidently managed to plant — through their chosen Amazon avenue — a surprising amount of gratuitous insult and accusation.
As to ‘Liz’, perhaps we were drawing too close by voicing our suspicions in our posts because she claimed her latest comment to be her last: ‘memo to self, “stop feeding the trolls!” so I have.’ And it has just been pointed out to us that ‘troll’ is used pejoratively in internet jargon — by those who know. ‘Seicolegwr’ writes: ‘…but my comments were neither published nor acknowledged (and nor have anyone else’s been)’ — although he cannot know that — and he goes on to pour thorough-going unpleasantness upon us. Incidentally, we have actually responded privately to those whom we believe to be genuine.
It was not Jac’s sisters who, as he said, ‘…claim, for example, that Jim invented his illness to gain sympathy.’ It was in fact ‘the Wren’ who, first mooted that possibility on To Hatch a Crow,* 12/09/2010, after reading Sir Andrew Motion’s review. We quoted their comment six months later in a post ‘Our Response to a Review of West by Jan Morris’, 05/03/2011. We think it was deliberately misleading of ‘Seicolegwr’ to write so, as if he doesn’t really know the actual sequence of these comments we would be extremely surprised… He meant, obviously, to insultingly imply that we were spiteful as well as to impugn our honesty — in the same comment — by virtually accusing us of lying about ‘Jim’s cancer’. That is we say he does not have the disease. As we have written elsewhere, we would not wish that fate upon him. Ref. our post Jim Perrin diagnosed with terminal lung cancer?.
Thus it would seem that both ‘Seicolegwr’ and ‘Liz’ have actually used Amazon as their ‘avenue’ (as ‘Liz’ claimed we did) not in order to say anything worthwhile — or indeed anything at all about West — but to specifically and effectively abuse us. We stated in the introduction to our site that having taken great exception to the lies written by Jim Perrin in West (as we have proved them to be, whatever ‘Seicolegwr’ may snidely imply or accuse us of directly) we intended to ‘set the record straight’ for our sister Jac’s sake. We have also said that: ‘We will challenge every inaccuracy… by allowing them to stand, unchallenged, we allow his [J.P’s], in our opinion, self-mythologising to be perpetuated and the ‘inaccuracies’ by their repetition are given verisimilitude’.
This is still our position. We have never used aliases, pseudonyms or anonymity and we gave our full names: Elisabeth Simpson, Caroline Hardaker and Alex Richardson. Our address is, again. www.jacssisters.org and we did make it perfectly clear on To Hatch a Crow, 13/09/2010, that we would not be accepting public comments when we first posted the address there.
We have not set up as a forum. We are using our site as we intended to do — from its inception — as a means to tell the world what the truth was, and is, about Jim Perrin and his version of his relationship with our sister: we did not set out to be vindictive although it has been necessary, frequently, to be explicit in order to validate our account. These two commentators are well able, should they wish, to leave their comments on the address above. It is interestingly that many have done so; many have told us of their own unhappy experiences with Jim Perrin; many have confessed to being ‘afraid’ of him; many have thanked us for bringing to light the dark side of Jim Perrin — for showing the real nature of the man.
He would not like to see these letters on a forum. Nor would he wish others to read them. No: We now realise what has been happening, and although we, possibly misguidedly, chose to respond in the past to ‘Melangell’ (who set about to delete us from The Guardian thread), and more recently to ‘Liz’ — whom we believe has attempted the same sleight of hand on Amazon— yet it has been a fascinating and revealing diversion. Of course ‘Liz’ and ‘Seicolegwr’ do not wish to post a comment on our private site. They want to use the very public Amazon thread, as ’Melangell’ did last year on The Guardian thread — ref. A Question of Identity — to turn people from Jac’s sisters, and away from the truth about Jim Perrin.
So there is not, actually, a ‘misunderstanding’ on their part at all. It seems to us a deliberate and very elaborate attempt at obfuscation, and we cannot think of anyone but Jim Perrin who would be bothered. That ‘Seicolegwr’ should have chosen his words with such ‘care’ in his comment on Amazon, rather than stating plainly any certain knowledge of Jim Perrin’s ‘cancer’, is not in the least convincing, and his attempt to discredit us — as ‘Melangell’ did formerly, and as ‘Liz’ has done — cannot diminish the veracity of our site: nor, to judge by the many thousands of hits it has received, its relevance for the readers. We are not so easily deleted. In each of the suspect reviews and comments posted — under whichever influence or alias — we believe Jim Perrin has shown himself, (perhaps more of himself than he might have wished), and in his True Colours…
Jac’s sisters.
* This thread which the genuine commentator, The ‘Wren’, used, (as well as the plants ‘Liz’ and ‘Seicolegwr’), was deleted some time ago, which we are aware renders this post somewhat puzzling. At the time Jim Perrin used it (under those two aliases) to anonymously score points. However he had more success with his use of ‘Liz’ on the Amazon’s comments thread and continued for a while to plant there the most scurrilous remarks about us. Finally, and by then rightly aggravated that Jim Perrin’s actions seemed unrestrained, we contacted Amazon giving them all our evidence that ‘Liz’ and ‘Seicolegwr’ were in fact aliases. To their credit they believed us and judging the case for themselves removed every single one of their comments from the record…