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.
Constantine,
My spath hides his evil by coming across as “eccentric”. In fact, he once said, “I’m just an eccentric inventor and pilot” He is actually neither since he has no license and has never invented anything.
Before that mask, he was a gifted musician who sacrificed everything for his music. That’s musician-speak for a lazy good for nothing that sponges off women and stays out all night.
These were just some of the incarnations of the spath.
My point is, we should not be taken in by what is presented, (because he presented being a compassionate animal lover.)
We should look for the red flags or the absence of red flags. Behavior that crosses boundaries, promiscuity, thinking they are above the rules or asking for special favors are the ones that come to mind at the moment. There are many more.
It’s a cynical way to look at people but their affinity for masks doesn’t cover the red flags, that’s why it works.
Katy,
Haha, yes, but in fairness I was MUCH more jaded and cynical at twenty five than I am now! So I guess that means I’m mellowing a bit with age.
I forgot to mention a specific example of why I think we are in the presence of something “new”- and it’s basically what I would call the “cultural elephant in the living room”: pornography. What I mean by this, is that at least in Roman times you had to be an adult aristocrat to be invited to the decadent parties and the orgies. Well, now our twelve year olds (according to statistics, eighty five percent of them.) are literally just a mouse click away from stuff which I imagine is FAR worse than anything the Romans participated in. What’s more, most of them attend these “orgies” on a daily basis.
As a coach, I hear my boys talking about this stuff all the time – even the best of them. In fact their language is literally suffused with the jargon of the porn industry (God save me, but I didn’t know what a “MILF” was until I googled it two years ago!). So what I’m saying is this, that it has NEVER been the case at ANY time in history (on any part of the globe) that children were exposed to this vileness. And if the reports are correct, probably eighty five percent of our boys are watching this filth from age 12 until adulthood – at which point it’s safe to assume that they’ve been thoroughly corrupted by it.
Indeed, I don’t think there’s anything comparable to regular exposure to porn when it comes to coarsening the soul, and debasing the sentiments. In fact, you can literally see it spilling out and being “mainstreamed” into the popular culture: the language, the mores, the “celebrity sex tapes,” etc. All stuff that would have been wildly unacceptable even in our parents’ time is now taken simply as a matter of course.
Needless to say, I was once a seventeen year old boy, and I’ve seen a Penthouse magazine or two (!), but nothing even CLOSE to what is going on now.
My contention is that a lot of the behaviors we’re seeing here at LF are directly the result of males (and females) who have been exposed to this filth for years on end. And as far as I’m concerned, anyone who says that partaking in that garbage for fifteen years or more doesn’t PROFOUNDLY skew and degrade a person (and even literally rewire the brain), is an ASS!
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that porn CAUSES sociopathy. But I have little doubt that it contributes greatly to pushing the “close calls” over the edge; just as it undoubtedly brings everyone else down to a lower level.
So, yes, I do think that this is something disturbingly new. And it’s one of the few instances where I think my libertarian instincts might be wrong. George Will thinks we should simply make it illegal, and I’m half way towards thinking he might have a point. At any rate, from a spiritual outlook, I think it’s safe to say that it’s at least as bad as heroin.
Constantine
Don’t you think the source of porn talk comes from the lyrics of the music they listen to? Online porn is boring. I don’t think it causes Sociopathy either. But I do think today’s music makes degrading others NORMAL, desensitizes. And that desensity shows in sociopathic behaviors. We all did those as kids, but we pulled back when we matured… or at least those of us who are not spaths did.
Sky,
Well, as I was saying before, I do think my “post spath” intuition is much better than what I was working with before. In other words, things that I would now recognize in a heartbeat as red flags, did somewhat escape me at the time. So there is definitely a learning curve, and I do think I’m learning!
But go easy on us “eccentrics”! Actually, by today’s standards, I take “eccentric” to simply mean a person who still reads books, and is interested in “odd” things like Romantic poetry and Wuthering Heights!
Katy,
YOU think it’s boring because you’re a sensible adult woman. But unfortunately, I don’t think most of our KIDS think it’s boring! And as far as the music lyrics, go, I would say that the degradation of porn comes first, and then filters into the music. (from the little I know of it, many of the rappers tend to have a foot in both worlds) But at some point I think it’s true that they both take on a life of their own and end up poisoning everything in something like equal measure.
I do think it’s a mistake to underestimate the effects of this. Maybe not on us “older folk” who, fortunately, missed the boat on this one. But as I said, from what I see being around kids all the time, it is having a strikingly negative influence on THEM.
Katy,
Oh, and I didn’t notice my Freudian slip: yes, damn it, I’ll have to go back and edit that!
In reference to Nero’s time… the man before him “Claudius” as a character in “I Claudius” says something “Let all the muck come out of the mud.” After he died (probably poisoned) the shit hit the fan. Though his cousin before him, Caligula, wasn’t much better.
Oxy, I like the analogy you make about Columbus and flat earth thinking. It works if you compare uneducated thinkers (the majority of people) of that time against Columbus. More here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myth_of_the_Flat_Earth
I posted elsewhere that I am fighting a spath at work. I decided to just go full-frontal with the truth here today.
I won’t back down. I’m investigating with other people around here and finding some other interesting incidents.
I threatened to file a grievance against her — personally — with the union, and I’ve documented my conversation of this morning with our boss.
The thing is, though, I kind of smelled her out a long time ago. No problem, I just went “no contact” and transferred to another part of the department.
But I didn’t smell “eau de spath” on her, just “messed up.” Now I’m under no illusions. She has found ways to follow me here, most ridiculously reporting to my supervisor that I “disrupt” meetings — when he wasn’t at the meeting, of course.
A co-worker and I agreed that her value is not nearly worth the trouble she’s causing to higher-ups. And yet, we’re the ones getting hit. Something doesn’t add up. It speaks to the modus operandi of spaths that they also work the authority figures. It could even be a blackmail going on with them.
Stinks to high Heaven, you ask me.
For all the pretentiousness to “professionalism” and “good manners,” she’s an ANIMAL. As one disgusted retiree put it, “I don’t know what dirt road she grew up at the end of, . . . ”
I’m not sure if I’ll still have a job when the other shoe drops. But it seems so far that I’ve called her bluff. A part of the intuition is this:
If the person seems to have endless power, but you can actually see the way to trump it, perhaps simply telling someone what they just did — they’re bluffing. If you can’t imagine yourself calling the bluff, actually doing that — it seems kind of nuts — that’s a big red flag that it’s real.
Constantine,
yes I know that some eccentrics are not spaths but spaths will mimic an eccentric person to give their boring facades an extra little spice and to seem original.
My BF was his best friend for many years and BF really is an eccentric inventor! As it turns out, once I met BF and got to know him we both realized that spath was wearing his “skin”. Everything BF did, Spath had to do it too. He was trying to “be” him. In 1989 BF bought a brand new white camaro, so spath convinced me that I had to buy a brand new white Eclipse in 1990.
BF bought acreage a year later, and Spath convinced me to buy property on acreage a year after. Our shop is a carbon copy of the shop design BF used.
Spaths have no actual self. They are just the mask they are using. Underneath is a slimy green envy which makes them copy and morph into anyone that looks shiny and interesting to them.
I think that lack of originality is a red flag and a key component of spathnicity.
Darwinsmom- to catch up from yesterday- I am still with him as I sort through things, preparing for departure. Then I will have found peace and YES! Dammit I want it! More so- I DESERVE IT!
Oxy- sometimes I just scream. The word is not of any consequence or importance, just the number of decibles I can hit. Wahoo!
Now I am off to read and catch up…