Jim Peron Unbound raison d'être
In 2005 Jim Peron lost his status as a prominent and respected New Zealand Libertarian commentator and fled the country in a cloud of paedophile allegations.
While the rumours had dogged Jim Peron within the Libertarian community for some time, the controversy went national when NZ First Leader, Winston Peters, publicly called Jim Peron a paedophile. In the ensuing media storm, Jim Peron captured the nations sympathy as he portrayed himself as an innocent victim, bewildered as to how anyone could possibly think he could have had any connection to paedophilia. Every major current affairs program and every major news outlet ran the story and all were sympathetic to Jim Peron; the editorial of the NZ Herald was particularly scathing of Winston Peters.
The media were critical as they had previously heard the allegations and had spent months searching for substance and found nothing. Gaynz.com's Chris Banks was interviewed on Radio BFM and said that given that professional media researchers had found no evidence, none existed. Peron was innocent and Winston Peters was seriously out of line.
The Libertarian community pointed the finger at Lindsay Perigo accusing him of being the instigator of false allegations. The public savaged Winston Peters and poured out sympathy for Jim Peron. The nation was outraged and the NZ First Party had members angrily withdrawing party membership.
Some members of the ACT Party were not so sure the allegations were baseless and concerned that Jim Peron enjoyed a close, influential friendship with ACT Party leader Rodney Hide, brought the matter to advocacy, lobby and research group The Locke Foundation. Within 5 days Locke Foundation researcher Madeleine Flannagan located the smoking gun: a peodophile journal called Unbound published by Jim Peron.
Madeleine Flannagan found Unbound by tracing the previous owner of Jim Peron's San Francisco bookstore. Jim Peron had mentioned two previous owners in one place on the web, well before the controversy, but in all interviews following the controversy had only referred to one who was apparently deceased or otherwise incommunicado. Madeleine Flannagan checked San Francisco property records and discovered there had never been two previous owners, only one, the name she had uncovered and not the person Jim Peron had been telling the media he bought the store from.
Together with researchers Dr Matthew Flannagan and Dr Glenn Peoples, the Locke Foundation gathered the evidence that:
- Jim Peron had misled the NZ public
- Jim Peron's book store became the headquarters of the San Francisco chapter of NAMBLA after he bought it
- NAMBLA only ceased meeting in his store weeks before he sold it, some years later
- Jim Peron's store became the self-proclaimed "headquarters" for paedophile apologia/erotica publication Unbound
- Jim Peron was the editor of Unbound
- Jim Peron authored an article published in Unbound arguing paedophilia was not child abuse and was loving and wholesome
- Jim Peron negotiated prominent paedophile apologists and convicted serial paedophiles to contribute to Unbound
- Jim Peron falsely accused Lindsay Perigo of making up paedophile charges against him
- Jim Peron falsely accused the previous owner of his store of inviting NAMBLA to meet on the premises and portrayed himself as having inherited the problem that he had to clean up
These findings are published in the Locke Foundation Report.
In this context, it is hard to believe that the fact Jim Peron's store was under investigation by the FBI, was raided, literature confiscated and employees arrested and convicted on paedophile charges was all the innocent, unwitting chain of events that Jim Peron has claimed.
Today Jim Peron is again rising in influence in Europe and the USA. In fact, in November 2007 the International Society for International Liberty (ISIL) actually purchased Jim Peron's old bookstore, Free(dom) Forum Books, the bookstore where Unbound was published and have brought Jim Peron in as an authority as if nothing had happened, as if neither South Africa or New Zealand cancelled his visa.
In November, ISIL acquired ownership of Laissez Faire Books – long the top libertarian bookseller and definitely an iconic institution in the libertarian movement.
Many of you will remember that from 1990 to 1997, ISIL operated Freedom's Forum Bookstore on Market Street in San Francisco, and produced mail-order catalog sections in the Freedom Network News – so the book business is not new to us. We know the ropes pretty well and are prepared for the challenges of operating in this unique niche market.
And to add further experience to our reorganization of Laissez Faire Books, we have brought in veteran libertarian bookseller Jim Peron, who in fact ran the Market Street store for five years before we did. Jim later operated successful bookstores in South Africa and New Zealand. Jim has also published numerous books over the years through Cobden Press. He is also a top expert on collectible libertarian-oriented books.
There are suggestions that he was framed and the innocent victim of a smear campaign, Michael Stuart Kelly writes "JIM PERON WAS FRAMED BIG TIME" in "The Smearing of Jim Peron".
Until now, people only had access to Jim Peron's version of events and the remnants of the media articles that Google can still pick up. The Locke Foundation report has been offline for some years, Unbound was never available online, so until this site was created Jim Peron could easily portray himself as the poor victim once again secure in the knowledge that few people had access to the evidence.
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