Dear Editor,

I found very interesting the several letters published in your newspaper about mental illness stemming from the case of Mr Horace Peterkin.

Most, if not all the writers expressed sympathy for him, maybe because he was an upstanding citizen and former president of the Jamaica Hotel and Tourist Association.

While I was really touched by the account of the advertising executive who was forced to leave her home after her mentally ill brother said the voices in his head told him to kill her, forgive me if I do not feel this same need for sympathy for Mr Peterkin.

To begin with, I believe the honest thing to do is to admit that I am an employee of Sandals where Mr Peterkin was one of the general managers. I am also a very committed employee for good reason.

After leaving the University of Technology with a degree, I could not get a job for three years. Luckily I found one at Sandals dealing with watersports equipment, and even though that was not what I studied, I have been able to make a good salary and take care of my young family.

Although I did not work at the same hotel as Mr Peterkin we heard his name from time to time, especially when his own managers rose up against him for activities of his that they could not comprehend. One of those managers said he had awaken them at 4:00 am to have a meeting to discuss nothing of any consequence. These are managers who go to bed very late serving guests so you can imagine being summoned to a meeting at 4:00 am.

When we heard that his family had put him in the University Hospital’s Ward 21 for mental health treatment, we all started to wonder. Of course he blames others for putting him there.

If that was all, I would be sympathetic, but when I hear about the kinds of things he is saying about Sandals, as if left to him he would see the entire hotel chain crumble and put thousands of people out of work, it is hard, Mr Editor, to feel empathy. My job is important to me and to my co-workers who are all very upset with him.

I am not saying mental illness is not a serious matter. But it does not give him the excuse to be maligning and trying to undermine a company which afforded him an elite lifestyle, such as living in one of the most coveted parts of Montego Bay.

His threats, crude and rude remarks against former colleagues smacks of nothing less than ingratitude when all he ever achieved came because of them. His claims about his own achievements are fictional and never seek to credit his employers. For example, what community work he did in Flanker was with the big resources given by the company, not from his own pocket, yet he claims all for himself.

While his former employers are ignoring him on the feeling that he is unwell, I do not appreciate the way he threatens to call for help from ‘the little people’ and his ‘army which is bigger than the military and the police’ in Flanker, whom he says ‘eat their dinner over dead bodies and joke about it’.

With people like this, I do not feel safe to give you my name and home address, Mr Editor. You might not be aware but Mr Peterkin has been offering a $25,000 reward for one of your letter writers with whom he is angry, to meet him, saying he wants to express ‘thanks for her concerns’. After that kind of threat issued by him, I would not want to meet such a person. He should use that money for his treatment.

I have a suggestion for the Observer. You might not get the permission of your owners since they are the same ones who own Sandals, but you should try to get copies of the thousands of really poisonous e-mails sent by Mr Peterkin to large numbers of people. It would make much better reading than the poor excuse of a book which he says he wrote while in Ward 21.

If he gets to the point of admitting that he has a mental illness, then he can earn my sympathy.

Donovan Jenkins (an assumed name)

Whitehouse, Westmoreland