We were told at the weekend — Sunday, November the 4th — that Jim Perrin may recently have moved; and in several earlier posts we have described how over the years, when this elusive author has felt the CSA (now the CMS) were closing in on him, he hastily packed his belongings and left the address they had discovered. For one more personal example, when our sister Jac was involved with him in 2003 he moved to her house from his own in Llanrhaeadr ym Mochnant: he organised this without Jac having the least notion as to his real motive for leaving that property, and she never knew of his past history with, or current connection to, the CSA or that his latest whereabouts had recently been made known to them by someone who knew of that Llanrhaeadr address…
We know that later, after she died — and he was thwarted in his deceitful attempt to take over the tenancy of her house from her children (by telling them, within hours of her death: ‘it had been their mother’s last wish that he should’) — he had other relationships and subsequent ‘disappearances’ and two of these we can substantiate at first hand. This was before he moved in with his current partner Jan Wolf: since when he, and she, left the addresses where subsequently they lived in a) Harlech, b) Drefach Felindre and c) in her mother’s house in Llanystumdwy, for the same reason. (That is, the CMS had been in touch with him.) Perhaps, as in our late sister’s case his partner is entirely innocent of any suspicion about this aspect of his life — we cannot believe she knows — or that she would be complicit if she did, of his on-going deception of the Child Maintenance Service? We were told by a friend of hers that he has forbidden her to read the posts on our site; they are only full of lies and character-assassination…
In other instances, giving them the slip just in time to avoid ‘capture’, he would flit to a bolt-hole in France: he did this when he went from Penrhyndeudraeth some years ago. Abandoning the young woman with whom he was living and involving himself with someone new in Ariège he told her he ‘had met the love of his life and would not be returning to Wales’ — thus putting hundreds of miles between himself and those who sought him! Jim Perrin has out-manoeuvred the CMS at least four times in this way and it appears during the last few weeks he may have achieved another such vanishing act…
Incidentally, The Guardian has paid him for no less than thirteen Country Diary entries from Ariège in his time as a diarist — described as he has been as ‘The Country Diarist for Wales’. (It is typical that he has always let this title stand, has never corrected it, and never acknowledged there are others; John Gilbey, for one.) However, not a single penny of his earnings from The Guardian or from books, festivals or lectures, has he ever passed on to the mothers for the maintenance of those of his children who are under-age.
(And, do note, we are discussing only child maintenance — not alimony, which we hear he has been pretending to his sympathisers. The mothers of those children whom effectively he disowned never once sought this — ‘the dreaded alimony’ to which so many men claim they are martyrs! It was financial support for his children they had hoped for — and to which they are entitled; and to this day Jim Perrin has taken every possible step to avoid paying them. These women have received nothing.)
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Our ‘well-wishers’ (as we describe them) have frequently shared with us the most useful information, and we thank them for contacting us about the current particular issue: where is Jim Perrin? We have been told that he has left his recent address in Wales and absconded (running it very close indeed) because he became aware the Child Maintenance Service, having again located him, were about to pin him down in legal action: this concerns non-payment of the child maintenance that for decades he has consistently refused to acknowledge — and his conspicuous dishonesty leaves him owing his dependent children sums well in excess of tens of thousands of pounds.
How do we know this? Because some of our ‘well-wishers’ have given us details they have verified, and which those most closely concerned have also confirmed. The news has spread like wildfire amongst the circle who already know of Jim Perrin’s offences: nevertheless, and practised as he has become at evasion, it seems he has given the CMS the slip once more.
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This raises an intriguing question: we have now learned of another address where he could be living, still in Wales, but it has also been pointed out to us that most recently he has been talking on Face book, as a fact, of his intention to leave the UK for good, and to move to France — he says the political climate here is one he can no longer tolerate…
We wonder, if this is so and he plans to become an ‘expat’ (actually to avoid British justice… ) and if his wish is to live permanently in France, what the French authorities will make of their aspiring English immigrant? Presumably he will not be able to fly under the radar for long (as he has always done in Wales) if he hopes to become a resident, and we suppose it will be less easy to hide away in that French Pyrénéen bolt-hole — as he did on former occasions — when the stringent use of the French red tape requires of him formal documentation. A bona fide British citizen (with National Security number etc.) and at present an EU citizen, may not need a carte de séjour permanent or an equivalent, but if Jim Perrin’s documentation is valid in Britain why are the CMS having such difficulty? And if he is determined to stay in France he will need to have lived there for at least five years (and not just as a visitor).
Also, consider the paperwork needed to be filled in — ‘honestly’ that is — with details which he could not fudge. ‘Brexit’ will surely bring in train further complications whatever the outcome, but in any event it is clear from Jim Perrin’s history that official paperwork is not his forte… and yet these things are quite important in France — the bureaucracy of daily life. And it is always natural for neighbours to be curious about newly-arrived foreigners: how will he conduct himself, in La Belle France?
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If Jim Perrin does choose France over the UK there is always going to be the little difficulty, should he wish to return (even for a day trip), of the fugitive status which will automatically apply if he flees the CMS when they are officially requiring his attention in this country… We suppose there can be no question of dual nationality as by now the CMS armed with that information would have caught up with him.
As to the political situation here in the UK, we know of course, and for certain, it is not that which Jim Perrin abhors to the point of deserting his country — and for all his conspicuous condemnation of this situation he is unable to vote, being determined not to provide the details required by the electoral registration officer — instead he is planning as usual to take himself beyond the reach of the Child Maintenance Service: a tactic as we have shown he has used several times before…
Will he succeed in the long run? He has outwitted that government department time and again and it remains to be seen if they are finally able to outwit him!
Those who have spoken to us have expressed their complete astonishment that Jim Perrin has avoided for so long the paternal responsibilities for which he is legally liable. It shows the lengths this individual is prepared to go in his efforts to avoid the support of his children and he has, by hoodwinking so completely the relevant authorities, been running rings around them for many years: they who have already spent thousands of tax-payers’ pounds in their unsuccessful efforts to bring him to book.
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This whole episode, as yet unsatisfactorily dealt with, has been a large and most unedifying part of Jim Perrin’s life. Had he originally accepted, as would an honourable man, that he was by law as well as by any other ethical standard responsible for the financial assistance of his children; or if he had made some efforts to put in place the appropriate arrangements even only partially, instead of ignoring their existence not just as legal entities but as his children — and by this stance nullifying them as vulnerable human beings — perhaps he would not now be considering leaving the country. Or… as an elaborate double-bluff, might it be that he is still hiding out in North Wales?
The peripatetic lifestyle which the constant flitting from his innumerable addresses has entailed, as he has tried to keep one step ahead of the CMS, and the possible exile he is apparently now contemplating, are the consequences of his own dishonourable decisions: it is such a travesty of fatherhood.
Jac’s sisters.
PS. 17/09/2020. We have been told that for some months now Jim Perrin has been living in Village de Senesse de Senabugue, in the house bought by his partner, Jan Wolf, (from his previous, and for a lengthy period his concurrent partner, Amanda Townend — although this deceit was not realised by the two women at the time; each thought they were ‘the only one’) but that recently he has been back in Wales. Perhaps the corona virus has had some influence on his living arrangements but his partner’s family also owns a property in Talsarnau in North Wales and he has written, from this location, several Guardian Country Diary entries. (Surely, however, his deceitful ways are also to be recognised in the fact that he has written a great deal more entries purporting to be from Wales when actually it is known as a certainty that he has been living in France… )