As a rule, we have never mentioned by name people we have discussed in our posts, not wishing to draw undue attention to those who may feel they have reason to fear Jim Perrin. Nor have we betrayed confidences or identified any of the many dozens who have contacted us, but have guaranteed their anonymity.
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Readers may recall that we devised our site with the intention of righting the many wrongs of which we knew the author Jim Perrin to be guilty. Then, we had read and were concerned only with the contents of West and comments by ‘Melangell’ (although later such large numbers did contact us that inevitably our interest has sometimes shifted) but we had no idea of vengeance as such, just wishing to deny and correct where possible his lying descriptions of his relationship with our sister — descriptions which also included references to the author of the post which follows. And, we believe, by using the female alias ‘Melangell’ in The Guardian (active from 15/05/2010 until 12/07/2013) he spitefully compounded his deceit.
On The Guardian’s comments thread he perpetuated his falsehoods, first published in West, that members of our family had behaved badly, even dishonourably, to Jac — our sister — and, even more emphatically, he claimed, to him… We would point out that in his remarks in both West and The Guardian he was referring not only to the time when he lived at our sister’s house and we knew him as ‘family’, but afterwards — in the days and months since she died — when he was insinuating and accusatory. He made opportunities to slander us (with blatant calumny, as was reported to us) and to libel us in West and, in The Guardian, as ‘Melangell’.
This was before we concluded, as we had been strongly advised, that it was too serious to ignore and that we should retaliate. To ‘go public’ — with our site; our suspicions; and our evidence. (It is an irony which Jim Perrin himself will surely recognise: if he had not written as he did we would never have responded — and it is virtually certain that jacssisters.org would not have been thought of… )
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As we explained in ‘Jac’s sisters introduction to their site…’ we had no knowledge of the internet, and our original website was designed by a kind friend who encouraged us and gave us confidence*; thus we began to write of our sister’s history. In the early entries we described Jac’s ‘first love’, and in the subsequent posts in which he featured we continued to use that name.
Jim Perrin’s libellous portrayals of him in West (and clearly he was eaten away with pathological jealousy) were shocking to us — as of course we knew the subject of his accusations; he was, in effect, a brother-in- law — and we were determined, for one element of our site, to address the malevolence that Jim Perrin had directed towards him with such obvious and malicious glee…
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We also invited Jac’s ‘first love’ to speak for himself and to write a post of his own, which at first he was willing to do. Indeed he did write a detailed and sensitive recollection of that period with Jac — (the ‘period’ which Jim Perrin later, in West, so disgracefully appropriated for his ‘story’, and dramatized in his book with lies and gross exaggeration); and hoping to set the record straight we anticipated posting it.
Sadly, though, he was finding it still too raw to write of, and to disclose, and it became impossible for him to complete: now, as time has passed, he has overcome his initial hesitance and has given us the revised and measured contribution which will follow this explanatory introduction.
It can hardly be imagined how much it has cost him in emotional terms, with the associated memories and soul-searching. To have written of their troubled past and, as it were, to re-live it in the present must have been traumatic to one who experienced it decades ago and who had tried, with whatever success, to suppress the indelible pain of that decision and of that parting.
We do thank him for setting down his thoughts and sharing them on our site. He has certainly, with this invaluable post — and from his undeniable first-hand understanding — ‘set the record straight’, for Jac’s sake.
And he will not be ‘anonymous’, nor use an alias: he is Dr Jim Duff, and we welcome him.
Jac’s sisters.
* The site in its present form, with its ‘bells and whistles’, is the work of another friend who in due course took over the task, and we are so grateful to them both for their work on our behalf. To be able to use the internet, of which previously we had no knowledge, is to have the means to present the truth about Jim Perrin and hopefully, by exposing him, to right the wrongs of which he has been guilty — not only to our family but to many others.
