The recent furore concerning abuse of the internet by ill-intentioned, deceitful and dishonest authors is daily growing in momentum.

Jeremy Duns’ research by which he uncovered the scandal of the behaviour of crime-writer, R J Ellory, and which he has now made public, clearly resonates with many other authors and readers, including ourselves, as is shown by the number of articles (and following comments) on the subject.

In the course of our posts on ‘jacssisters’, we have given our own opinion that one of The Guardian country diarists, Jim Perrin, is someone who practises these deceits; and we have noted several names we believe he has used as aliases — possibly ‘hi-jacked’ — or even  perhaps ‘borrowed’ from friends or acquiescent acquaintances.

From July 2010 we were attacked by what, we have no doubt, were the pseudonymous postings of ‘Melangell’ (JP?)* on The Guardian thread which followed the review by Sir Andrew Motion of a questionable book by Jim Perrin; a book which contained many wicked lies about our sister Jac, (Jacquetta) — some of which were exceptionally distasteful. This was one of the reasons that we set up this site.

‘Melangell’s’ style — ‘her’ use of particular words and construction, the tone, and in some cases, the length (with flattering ‘in depth’ analyses of Jim Perrin’s work), the literary allusions and reading recommendations (nearly always), the sniping: ‘A far better poet than Andrew Motion [sic]’ ─ convinced us that the author, Jim Perrin, was also the ‘author’ of those comments. We posted a comment to that effect, on The Guardian comments thread, directly querying ‘his authorship’: he/she — we were hardly surprised — denied it. ‘Not so…’

The circumstantial evidence grew as the postings continued, and we felt that only he could have written them — using the alias ‘Melangell’.  ‘Facts’, ‘details’, which, outside our family none but Jim Perrin could have known, regularly appeared, although distorted, in comments posted (in female guise!) by ‘Melangell’. Many of the comments were critical about other reviewers: all those which were directed to Jac’s family were deeply insulting and sometimes scurrilous — libellous, even.

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It is most interesting, we feel, in this context, that a renowned young Welsh poet and author, Siân Melangell Dafydd was, as it were, under Jim Perrin’s wing, staying at his home in the Pyrénées, in the year prior to those postings — in one comment Jim Perrin (we believe it was he), wrote, as ‘Melangell, 02/08/2010:  ‘When I visited Jim in the Pyrénées last year.’ All ‘his’ comments can still be seen on The Guardian comments thread — ‘Melangell’, his alter ego, continues to write them. Please click the link highlighted in the fourth paragraph to read them.

Jac’s sisters would now like to make it absolutely clear: we do not believe nor have we ever thought, for one moment, that Siân Melangell Dafydd had any involvement whatsoever with those malicious postings. We consider her to be of too fine a fibre to have been in any way complicit, either by knowingly lending her name to them, or by condoning them; and we think shame on Jim Perrin for Taking Her Name in Vain which, in our opinion, is how he ‘used’ her; by pretending to be her. (It is known that she stayed in Ariège when working on a book, and she thanked him in a speech of acceptance when later she won an award for that book.) And the chance of him, writing as ‘Melangell’ as we described above, is surely far too much of a ‘coincidence’ to be a coincidence!

His ‘use of her’ in this way, is we believe, an example of Jim Perrin using names not his own, ref. our post ‘Jim Perrin’s Fiefdom’ and we very much regret that Siân Melangell Dafydd has been inadvertently — although unfortunately it was inevitable — linked with our case against him: we certainly have no wish to cause offence nor to hurt her, and we offer our most humble apologies if in any way she feels that we have done so. Detailed reading of all our posts will reassure her as to the sincerity of our accusations and to whom the finger of suspicion is pointed…

Jac’s sisters.

*  We wonder if Jim Perrin developed ‘cold feet’ ? We know, as a certainty, that he reads our posts; maybe he became concerned that we were drawing undue attention to the (incriminating?) online activities of ‘Melangell’. So much that we have written was aimed directly at the aspect which we believe to be his outright chicanery, and he has now closed his thread down! His last comment was posted on 12/07/2013. (And a tellingly masculine  comment it was too; on cricket!) However, the dozens of posts remain, many of them the usual sycophantic flatteries of his fellow Guardian County Diarists (and most denigrating references to rivals): and, particularly, his confrontation with Jac’s sisters. Of course, should he delete them ‘we have print-outs’. Tricky, really, for ‘Melangell’ (JP?).