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.
Skylar, that’s really creepy! Wearing another person’s “skin”? I guess I would feel flattered initially, but that would get strange after a while.
Hmmmm, so Silence in the Lambs has a spath taken it a bit too literally
Yeah, I understand it takes some preparing to make a good get away. TOWANDA for PEACE
Yep, Silence of the Lambs could be considered a metaphor for the way spaths wear masks which they fashion from another human being. My spath brother told me, over 20 years ago, that when he is talking to another person, he doesn’t like them to look at his face because he feels like his face is turning into their face. It makes him self-conscious. To me this says that his “mirroring” is reflexive and that he is conscious of it but not really able to prevent it. He had to wear dark glasses in order to feel more comfortable.
Sky- when you said Spaths have no SELF. I about fell off my chair. I have said this about mine, but under sort of different terms.
He has damaged and eventually either destroyed or discarded, pretty much every single damn thing I brought into the relationshit. He has no respect for anything because he has no ‘self’.
I had to go through my emails to find this but here is how I described it to a friend of mine after having this epiphany about the spath- Before I knew to call him a spath…
—-
It seems I have uncovered a few truths in my life lately. Those who are so willing to cast the most hurtful stones, do so with gusto because they have no self confidence, self respect, self control or self worth. In essence- they have no SELF!
The deal with my subhuman, he has no self control so he tries like hell to control everyone around him.
He has no self worth, because he has never had to work hard to acheive the money to pay for anything. So he destroys everything belonging to anyone else. If I have nothing left, how can it compare to his stuff?
If he had self confidence, he could easily take control of his own actions, accomplish something on his own and begin to build his self worth. Then he may begin to have a sense of SELF.
If he had any self respect, he would have NEVER, EVER in a million years, done half of the things he has done, treated me the way he has for the past ???? years or he would have surely felt like an incredible POS for having done this. He would have made some serious changes, starting with himSELF.
Sky,
Weird and not so weird: it seems strange this chameleon ability happens reflexive, and yet it would be weirder if I think about it that it would be done fully consciously by choice. It isn’t empathy, but it seems to work like empathy. It’s CREEPY
The phoenix,
Gosh I never thought of the stuff he lost and broke in that way. He just seemed utterly careless with stuff: his own and that of mine. No surfboard shop wanted to rent any board to him, because the chance he’d return with a broken board was huge! He broke my fridge once when he chipped off the ice of the freezer to use for drinks. He lost two necklaces of mine which he wanted and begged, though they had symbolical value to me. Probably gave them to buy someone off. I regret having given them more than the money I “helped” him out with. The money I will be able to pay back. The necklaces I will never get back.
Darwinsmom- I am documenting everything I possibly can and the post recently about how to win against them in court as well as the one about custody, could not have come at a better time!
When the day comes that I rise from the ashes as my screen name implies- I am hoping that not only will I be able to walk away and be NC, but my young girls won’t have to endure ANY of his BS because I will have painted the courts a crystal clear picture of his and his familys behavior. To that- TO-FREAKIN-WANDA!!!!!!!!!!
Phoenix,
if you think about what you described, you will see that you have described a petulant child who has not yet grown to maturity. He has no values, he is floundering with his identity, so he is able to simply assume any value and any identity that happens to float past.
Narcissism and it’s more extreme and evil form, psychopathy, are cases of arrested emotional development.
A child naturally has no identity, since it was only born recently and has not had a chance to develop that identity. Nature facilitates the young one’s development of an identity by giving the social species a memetic ability. Infants and children naturally are fascinated by and want to be like their elders, so they copy them. That’s why role models are so important. It’s like spaths are constantly looking for a role model.
Darwinsmom,
I have seen this reflex in babies and my spath brother seemed overwhelmed by it through age 25 or so. But I think that spaths like my ex simply use it as a tool. They know they can do this naturally so they direct their ability.
No it isn’t empathy it’s actually envy. They see the surface of what you are and think that they can usurp your identity if they can take the symbols of what represents you. In my BF’s case, it was his car, property, shop, and even his inventiveness which my spath envied. In silence of the lambs, I guess the spath had to actually have the skin off the face of his victims.
It’s strange when I try to understand the way they think and I realize that it’s just a matter of regressing to the way I used to think as a child. I wasn’t evil though. Perhaps the evil happens from staying childlike long after it’s appropriate. I think of it like chinese foot-binding. The foot becomes deformed and grotesque from trying to stay small when its natural tendency is to grow. That’s like a spath: deformed and grotesque.
Dear Phoenix,
I am sorry that you have to have the battle of the century over the welfare of your children….they know that you care about the children, so of course they USE the kids as clubs to strike out at you, little caring that they destroy the children themselves.
There is a book, called “The Legal Abuse Syndrome” in the LF book store, please READ THIS, it will help you. You are right too to DOCUMENT and DOCUMENT more. Video is wonderful, audio is okay, but get ALL the evidence you can get to show that he is a hateful person and keep your head about you and PLAY YOUR CARDS CLOSE TO YOUR CHEST. Don’t forewarn him of anything you plan to do. I may be preaching to the choir but it can’t be said too often!
Darwinsmom- That was only one of the small epiphanies I have had over the past year. He doesn’t place any value in any of my stuff- nor ME!
Does that ring true for you as well? That was a bitter and hard pill to swallow at first. But after finding LF, seeing their MO, the way they work, how they have no feeling- it all made perfect sense.
Mine has been ‘careless’ with things, but there was a point to all of it–> Toss stuff around, look like you’re working, but Ooopsie Poopsie, I ‘accidentally’ (on purpose) broke this. Now that we don’t have one of those anymore- I don’t have to do any work associated with it. Score!
Good point about control. If the spath can’t control themself, they can at least control everyone around them, play them like little chess pieces on a board. That’s my workplace spath, all right.
Little Miss Prim and Proper, and it’s all for everyone’s own good, like some kind of professional development project for the staff. Spreading rumors about my being “disruptive” in meetings . . . yet not mentioning it to the person in charge of that meeting, who failed to notice that disruptiveness. She goes instead to my immediate supervisor, who wasn’t there (and doesn’t care, but he’s suddenly open to perceiving destructive patterns of behavior in me).
The spath view: It’s easier to create your own reality when the people you’re showing it to weren’t there to verify your story. Control the image, the reality, the rumors, and best of all, the implications and results.