Russell Williams was a colonel in the Canadian Forces, a pilot who flew dignitaries including Queen Elizabeth II, and commander of the largest airbase in Canada. That is, until he was arrested for breaking into women’s homes and stealing their underwear, sexual assault and murdering two young women.
Lovefraud has written about Williams before: For Halloween: A real monster who liked to dress up.
The question, of course, is how did such a predator achieve the rank of colonel? Should he have been flagged along the way? How was it that Williams received nothing but stellar reviews, and turned out to be a murderer?
The Canadian Forces, stunned by what happened, launched an inquiry into how candidates are selected for senior command positions. Could enhanced psychological testing have revealed Williams’ true nature? Here’s what Macleans reported:
The answer, sadly, is no. Among hundreds of pages of internal military documents, obtained by Maclean’s under the Access to Information Act, is a draft version of that review. It confirms what leading experts have long maintained: there is no off-the-shelf exam that employers, armed forces or otherwise, can use to detect sociopathic killers. “Given the recent events in CFB Trenton, it is natural for the CF to question whether or not the organization could have identified a sexual sadist or predicted that an individual would become a serial sexual murderer,” the report says. But that “would be unrealistic to expect.”
Read There’s no way to spot another Russell Williams on Yahoo.com.
It’s probably true that no one could have spotted Williams. His case, however, is highly unusual. As I wrote in Sudden psychopath: The horrifying yet strange case of Col. Russell Williams, this case is unique in that Williams showed no signs of disorder before he suddenly became a sexual pervert and predator. Unlike most sociopaths, he didn’t have a history of lying, cheating and abusing. That’s why his case is so weird.
Judged by behavior
Although I don’t know much about the various psychological tests that are available, I doubt that any self-report inventory, where the subject answers questions about himself or herself, would work. After all, sociopaths lie. They lie about everything, so of course they’re going to lie on a personality test. Even if the test is designed to spot inconsistencies, how would anyone know which part is true?
To diagnose sociopaths, you need to know about their behavior. Most sociopaths leave a lifelong trail of destruction, ranging from overt crime to subtle emotional and psychological abuse. Dr. Robert Hare developed the Psychopathy Checklist Revised (PCL-R), and it has become the gold standard for diagnosing psychopaths (the term he uses). The PCL-R has two parts—a semi-structured interview, and a “file review.” This means that the individual’s criminal and psychological records are included in the evaluation. In other words, the psychopaths are identified by their behavior, not by their answers on a test.
The Gift of Fear
We, of course, don’t want to experience a sociopath’s behavior. We want to avoid them, so they don’t have an opportunity to inflict any damage of any kind. Can we do it?
I believe the answer is yes. The way to avoid a sociopath is to listen to our intuition.
Several people on Lovefraud have posted about a book called The Gift of Fear, by Gavin de Becker. Oprah Winfrey called de Becker the nation’s leading expert on violent behavior, and his company helps hundreds of people, including celebrities, stay away from stalkers and other predators.
De Becker’s whole point in The Gift of Fear is this: Your intuition will tell you about danger. Listen to it.
I can back this assertion up with data. In the Lovefraud Romantic Partner Survey, conducted earlier this year, I asked the following question: “In the beginning of the involvement, did you have a gut feeling or intuition that something wasn’t right about the person or the relationship?”
Seventy-one percent of respondents said yes. Let me repeat that: 71% of people who became involved with sociopaths knew early on that something was wrong. Unfortunately, most of them stayed in the relationship anyway.
Trust your intuition
I think it’s unlikely that an accurate paper-and-pencil test for spotting sociopaths will ever be developed. However, we all have a built-in early warning system. The system isn’t designed to identify sociopaths in an abstract sense; it’s designed to warn us when we are in the presence of danger.
Here are the three steps to protecting yourself from sociopaths:
- Know that sociopaths exist.
- Know the warning signs of sociopathic behavior.
- Trust your intuition.
The key is to pay attention to the warning signals that we receive. But often we don’t. We doubt ourselves. We give the person another chance. We wait for hard evidence. In the end, we are damaged and filled with regrets.
Would listening to their intuition have saved Russell Williams’ victims? We’ll never know. But Gavin de Becker did relate a story about a woman who was assaulted in her apartment. The assailant told her to be quiet, promised he wouldn’t hurt her, and left the room. The woman, filled with fear, didn’t listen to him. She listened to her intuition and slipped away. The guy returned with a kitchen knife, intending to kill her. But she was gone.
Kathy,
Every time you post, I grow just a little more. Thank you.
Kathy:
Amen, sister. Amen. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.
I agree with everything you said. Like you, I had all the outward signs of success. And like you I was the original people pleaser. My inner compass was all about people pleasing. And that compass led to the complete and total destruction of my life and me.
I had to do a lot of healing in the aftermath. And today I live by a very different set of rules. The old me, if somebody said “I’m thinking of doing X”, would dive into action and research options X, Y and Z. Then I’d get all upset when they’d do nothing. Today I will only expend energy if I see tangible proof that the person is actually trying to change his life.
Yes, I have finally learned to focus on me and the people I choose to let into my life. I laugh when I look back on my old life. It was like I was observing myself playing a role. Today, I actually feel like I’m living an authentic life because I am the one who sets the terms I live it by because I am the one who has actually defined the terms.
BTW: I was thinking of you last week when I was up in NYC. I was walking by the hotel where we met for a drink the summer of 2009. I had a very good memory.
Kathleen, very interesting. I agree those are very helpful approaches for life in general. However, I fear for myself I was already doing all of that in my life before I met the spath. I reshaped my life and career when I was 27-28. I wasn’t afraid to turn things down. I was not living under the “what will people think of me if I say no” spell. I weighed opportunities. Both as a tourleader and teacher I was assertive, putting responsibility where it belongs. Heck I even did that from the start with the spath, and continued to do that mostly.
And when it came to dating…I was single for a decade before the spath, dated lots of men. At least the latter half I was open to meeting someone, took my time, practiced “is this what I want?” etc… I even cut men out of my life in that time. I even fought the attraction caused by the lovebombing for several days. My intuition and rationale knew he was bad news, but I was still living in the dillusion that everybody has some good in them. I had never known a spath this up close and personal before. I was never targeted before by one. I had never been lovebombed.
I disagree with the premisse that if we are assertive, take our time, put responsibility on them, etc that we will be too difficult a target for them. I was that, and I made myself a total challenge to him. The book “women who love psychopaths” shows that there are other factors in play for ending up targeted, hooked. I think your premisse is a dangerous one. It probably did help him to jump ship to another victim after almost 2 years though. But it’s 2 years too many.
I feel now that “is this what I want” got me nowhere really, just kept me in perpetual doubt and prolonged exposure.
In the end I think it requires listening to your intuition, knowledge about spath behaviour especially early on, the assertive stance in life, and especially a list of “This is what I DO NOT want” in the back of the mind to keep yourself from ending up being a new victim.
Hey, Kathy!!!! Glad to see you back on LF and as usual a great post!
Glad you are doing well and are continuing on the road toward healing! (((BIG hugs)))))
Darwinsmom,
Ah, but you see? that’s the key.
When you ask yourself, “is this what I want?”, you have to know the answer already. You have to have a life plan that doesn’t get derailed by every conman that comes along with an offer too good to refuse.
For me, I never knew what I wanted because I’ve never wanted anything. I was trained that my wants don’t matter, so I looked around for what other people wanted and made myself useful to THEM. There are other ways to not know what you want. You might be someone whose values shift with the cultural norm and that means you don’t know what you want.
It does boil down to having some definite values. If the course of action doesn’t lead to a life in sync with your values, you won’t take it. Each course of action, not just the end result, must be in line with the type of life you value.
The book, “The Happiness Trap”, goes deeply into this. I highly recommend it.
Definitely, I agree with you that without the knowledge of evil spaths, anyone can get taken. My spath murdered a preacher who had a wife, kids and a congregation. He was a pilot for a helicopter ambulance company. Spath used the pity ploy on him to get close and then he sabotaged the helicopter he was training someone in. Spath had asked him to fake some entries into his pilot’s log. He knew the preacher was a good man who valued helping others. Spath used the pity ploy to get him to do the illegal entries. Once he got close, he had access to the helicopter.
If the pastor had known how a spath works, he would have seen the spath coming a mile away. Lovebombing and PityPloys are the spaths weapons for derailing intuition. Only intellect and knowledge can defend against them.
I am getting sued-for 2 bills that I couldn’t pay during my 8 months without a job. I have to get an attorney. I’m totally freaked out about it. Never been in this situation before. I guess I better be quick to try to keep them from getting a judgment and garnishing my wages. Luckily I can’t get fired if I get garnished, but if they garnish me for one, then I won’t have the money to pay the other one, which will give me two garnishments and that could be bad. I finally get this job but apparently GOD isn’t finished testing me yet!
Liz,
call them up and say, “Hello Spath, We can work this out or I can file bankruptcy. If we work this out, you will get your money as soon as there is money to pay you, which would be very soon. If I file bankruptcy, you won’t get anything because the lawyer will get it all.”
That’s how you play chicken with a spath. You have to care less than they do.
ElizabethBennett:
I don’t know the extent of your indebtedness. You can try to negotiate on your own. However, if you don’t get anywhere I suggest contacting your state banking commissioner’s office and ask if they license debtor counselling services. For example, in New York, where I used to live, the banking department licensed them, and they all had to be not-for-profits. Since the state regulated them, you were pretty sure they were legit and a good portion of what you paid them under the payment plan that was negotiated for you would get paid to the creditors. Also, because the creditors were accustomed to working with these organizations, often they managed to get a good portion of the debt forgiven.
Kathy,
I can remember telling a friend of mine “there is something wrong with this relationship, I just cant put my finger on it”…not too long after, I found out the brutal reality..I was married to and then divorcing a full fleged sociopath. My lifeline to the s/p..??? It was my over exhausted efforts to please…to please my dad, my family, any one who was around. Finally, I met a guy who was charming, handsome, fun, polite….never knowing that this was his bait..a facade. Then I moved out of state to be with him. Lived with his parents and his sister…then s/p and his sister displayed a side that was very disturbing…they would walk around the house, NAKED…Yes brother and sister naked and in the bathroom together. we are talking grown adults in their 20’s here. When I mentioned the ” this is not normal” to them, they both accused me of thinking anything was wrong. It was absolutely crazy how they both flipped it on to me making me feel bad for even questioning.
This was more than 16 years ago and I still feel like if I would have just responded to the flags in a healthier more realistic way, because I did see the ‘red flags’, I just did not act the way I should have..Like get the next plane out and bye bye forever…
The issue was me at that time and now I have grown so much that i absolutely know what an s/p is…my kids know and i guess this was all part of the divine plan. Still sucks sometimes but at least i know now. There are still so many out there who dont…not to mention that these s/p’s are raising s/p’s. It is so important to teach our kids the behaviors. You can help them to recognize the s/p behavior without “talking bad”…
Always learning…Always growing.. Love and peace
darwinsmom,
Thanks for your post. It’s nice when people find something useful in what I write, but a debate is just as good. (I shouldn’t call it that, because I can’t afford much more time here. I’m on a few deadlines, and I dropped in because I’m procrastinating.)
I understand what you say, and respect your approach. I operated on rules based on what I’d learned about them and what I learned about what I didn’t want for a while. It reflected feelings I had of vulnerability and the sense that the world was full of danger. But eventually, I shifted focus because, for me, it was still engaging with them, still making them important and giving them power over my life. It got to the point that I didn’t want to do that. I’d given that jerk and his type enough of my life. I was taking it back.
I agree with you about lovebombing. It’s a bitch. We get sucked in by the person who reflects our dreams back to us. If they can just get our attention and make a positive initial impression, they start collecting information. The more rapport they build, the more we let our guard down, the more they learn, the better they get at this psychic seduction. If we have any kind of dreams at all, any wishes when we blow out the birthday cake candles, we’re potentially screwed. And I’m no different, even today. There are things I want, things that would make my life easier, that would make me happier or more relaxed about various things. Unless we go into full-blown Buddhist-style non-attachment, we can be hooked.
But my rules are now a little different than yours. It’s not their behavior I’m watching out for. It’s my own. Whatever my horrible ex did to me, his path was greased by my barely controlled excitement at finding “the answer.” He pushed my buttons in the lovebomb phase, but I responded in a way that now would start all my internal alarms ringing. Because the fundamental content of my internal response was something like “I don’t care what this costs, this is what I’m supposed to be doing.” Not that I would have admitted it at the time. But the evidence of that response is all over the decisions I made, the feelings I had about how he treated me, the way I hung on when I started getting the early warnings of who I was dealing with. And then continued to hang on, trying to fix the relationship and my own reactions, with all the good, rational, clever, and even manipulative tools I had at the time.
In the years since that relationship, I’ve had a few encounters with that response in myself again. I was scared of it when I had it with him, because it was so strong and he was so inappropriate for me (20 years younger and an employee). Now, it doesn’t scare me as much as drive me to some kind of judgment. I know this is a toxic reaction. It’s like being fed too much sugar and getting sick on it. Or eating some hallucinogenic drug and losing touch with everything that was real before. I step back away from it. I make a decision about how to take care of myself. And whatever it costs, I get away from whatever it causing it. I don’t blame the other person, because I don’t know if he has just accidentally hit a vulnerability in me. I just take responsibility for myself, and get the hell away. Because he’s not safe for me. For whatever reason, I’m not myself.
One of the most important things I learned from the relationship with my horrible ex is that feeling has nothing to do with love. It’s masquerading as love, just as that monster was occasionally masquerading as the man of my dreams. But it was really an out-of-control attachment to a person and an outcome that were, neither of them, in my control. And in fact, were not even there to support, nourish or even acknowledge me as another human being. I know this now. And that kind of attachment does not lead to anything like good behavior on my part.
My sister toward the end of that relationship commented that we were both acting like addicts. It took me a while to understand that comment. And as I write this, I can imagine you saying to me that it has nothing to do with you. That you were doing all the right things, and it went wrong because he had no good in him. I can’t argue with that. I didn’t live your story. But I do know that he treated you badly or you wouldn’t have the challenge to protect yourself from anything like that ever happening again. And that he took two years of your life. You sound like a smart person. I imagine you were conscious that all was not well for at least part of this time. And you made decisions to hang on for some reason. He offered you something that you really wanted, even though it was all an illusion he created to keep you where we wanted you. I assume you stayed there long after it became excruciatingly painful. That’s the story for most of us (and the relationship story laid out in “Woman Who Love Sociopaths”).
I can’t change him or anyone like him. Your comment about there being no good in them isn’t exactly the way I see it. It think there is no way to get into them and stimulate their ability to love, trust, share in any meaningful way. Their life strategy is to grab and, ultimately, to run. It’s not negotiable. It who they are and what they do.
I also can’t fight or outsmart anyone like him. Minor victories are possible. But they come at great cost to us, because we have to become as ruthless and unfeeling as they are. Longer term victories are simply impossible, because we can’t turn off our compassion forever. And once we’re feeling any kind of love or caring-related emotion, we’re at a disadvantage. It’s not just that they will use our feelings in some way, it’s that we get distracted from winning and they don’t.
So even though I got some kicks from slightly torturing my ex in areas where he was vulnerable, I knew it was not good for me or ultimately effective if he decided to show up again. The only real solution that I could see was internal, not focusing on him but on myself. I wasn’t looking to make myself cold-hearted (beyond what was necessary to deal with occasional challenges) but more to make myself emotionally independent in ways that eliminated or greatly reduced the likelihood of that toxic attachment thing popping up again.
I was lucky in that he was pretty honest about himself. I encouraged it, in my attempts to be infinitely accepting and forgiving. He didn’t open up frequently and it was usually when he under the influence of something or other, but when he did I learned a great deal about his emotional landscape and what drove him. He was ruthless, unable to feel for other people, impulsive in pursuit of feel-good fixes, and unable to understand the damage his behavior did to himself. But he was also the most focussed person I’ve ever met in pursuit of his objective, everything in his life was either fuel for his progress or an obstacle to be removed, and his objectives were clear and relatively detailed. He knew what he wanted. I admired this aspect and wished I had more of that part of his character.
I tell you this because what I wrote in the earlier past reflects this. He would never have gotten into my life if I had been more clear with myself about the life I wanted. When he started attacking my values, my belief in myself, my ability to shape my own life (rather than him shaping his for his own purposes), I didn’t really have a defense. My own sense of direction was too wishy-washy. I was still a romantic, imaging that things and people outside me were going to do some magical thing to my life and all I had to do was gravitate toward what attracted me. This was a workable philosophy when I was young, had little to lose, and really needed powerful teachers. But not a great philosophy for a woman who had life equity to protect and was in her professional prime.
I would not have said this a few years ago, but everything eventually comes out right. At least in my life. What I admired in him turned out to be what I developed in myself. And I actually cultivated some of his other characteristics too, because I needed to develop the capacity to be ruthless and uncaring for times it was necessary. I think these are part of a full-spectrum personality. And I don’t believe I would have been with him if I hadn’t been as psychologically blocked as he was, only in mirror image. I needed to expand my repetoire of reactions to life, and he was the teacher I needed (however costly the lesson was). I will always prefer to be sociable, trusting and optimistic, but that’s not always what’s required.
And as a result, I came to where I am now. As Matt wrote, it’s hard for me now to even relate to who I used to be. Except I know she’s a younger version, not as grown-up or peaceful or able to take care of myself as I am now. I don’t need to be aggressive now. I don’t need to prove anything. Instead my life is driven by interests and the desire to get better at certain skills. I really love this, not only the learning but the feeling of being on a path that is mine, the results of choices that don’t require any particular environment or person to exercise. And I love people now, the people in my life, in a way that I never knew before, appreciating without wanting to own them. I don’t have time for a “big” relationship right now, but when I do, I’m not worried about finding one. My demands are very small, except for the big ones of respect and honesty and the ability to care.
You sound a lot younger than me, and that presents special issues for you. If you want to have children, you have to take a big risk with who you select for the other parent. And the only insurance policy I can thing of to reduce that risk is to live around extended family or develop a large and loving group of friends. Not only will they help to protect you, but they will also probably help you find a good person. And if all else fails, you will have support in being a single mom. If I were going to have children today, this is what I would do as part of taking responsibility for myself and my kids. I wish I had done it with my son, consciously building a parenting support group, instead of depending so much on a single partner.
Sociopaths are attracted to people who have resources. The woman (I was one) who took part in that survey were not weak or stupid or resourceless. Nor were they unreasonable in wanting to love and be loved. But where they fell off the road and into toxic love was when they started valuing the relationship over themselves. Yes, they were set up for it by someone whose intention was to destabilize and control them. But if there is only one lesson to be learned from these relationships, it is this: nothing is more important than caring for your own identity and integrity. Even your experience of love has to be balanced with self-interest, every day, all the time. The questions never go away — is this good for me, right for me, nourishing me? Trust is important, but even that comes after self-interest. It is the only way you have anything to give.
Breaking free can be hard. Only a few months ago, I had to let go of someone I really liked, perhaps loved, because he had some behaviors that were self-destructive. I didn’t take them seriously at first, because he didn’t do them around me. And then he started exposing me to them, and I cut it off for my own good. I still miss him. It isn’t easy. But it’s better than betraying myself by saying it doesn’t matter or I can handle it, and then waiting for the next self-betrayal and the next.
I said this kind of attitude makes us unattractive to sociopaths, and I believe that’s true. They don’t go after difficult prey. They’re cheap, and they don’t want to pay any more than they have to for what they take. If they’re still trying and we’re still fighting it, the likelihood is that we’re playing their game already, whether or not we admit it.
The simplest way to get rid of them is stop paying attention to them. Even if they’re in our faces. Our attention and our use of it is the most powerful thing we have to both create our lives and to control what we allow in and keep out. Knowing what we want really helps, even in dealing with them. No matter what they say, tell them what you want. I want you to be faithful. I want you to pay your own way. I want you to be courteous and respectful. If you can’t do that, go away. I’m not interested in you.
All this assumes they’re not violence-prone. If they are, then we need to just exit as quickly and safely as we can. Whatever it costs. Again, whatever it costs.
Sociopaths teach us to not fool around, not with dangerous people, not with our safety, not with our vision or our determination to have what we want, not with our entitlements or our legitimate emotional needs. It may sound dull and boring to live such a disciplined life. But from my own experience, I can say that it opened me up to learning and a quality of relationships I’ve never known before.
Kathy