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.
Sky, about the book, I know wha tyou are talking about but not sure where it is in that book or if it is THAT book…That is a fairly common reference about the connections being cut. It is quoted in many papers and books.
BBE on your poll, of course I saw red flags (in non family members) and ALSO in family members, I didn’t heed them but I saw them.
Oxy,
it was the experiment in which the guy saw the command to leave the room with his right brain but didn’t see it with the left brain. So he got up to leave. They asked him why he was leaving and he said he was going to go get a coke. His left brain just made up an excuse, because it rationalizes everything it decides to do.
BBE,
I can say that I saw red flags aplenty, but I didn’t know what they meant. Even after reading “people of the lie”, it made no sense to me that an evil person could be SO good at being sweet and kind and compassionate. It just made no sense at all. I kept looking for an explanation that I could believe.
BBE
I was completely blindsided by the extent of his psychopathy–he attacked me suddenly.
But in hindsight there were many red flags, but I put them down to normal human failings. Too few and far between to make a connection as they were done over a span of years.
He played the part of devoted husband and father well.
Because he could cry–I never suspected a thing.
Great acting.
LWH
xxx
NB,
Yup, my best friend has it as a DVD. Watching that movie was like our bundle meditations we used to do up until a few years ago. Howver, it also features several people whose testimony is very questionable. It was a great trip to watch it, but I went looking for some scientific review about it and read some books on quantum physics to get the gist of it. The movie makes the mistake of transposing quantum effects on macro scale, outside of the atoms, basically.
I’ll be looking for peer reviews on the articles I posted here too.
But at the very least these studies make me wonder whether spaths have intuition as well. If they don’t respond differently while watching an emoting image from a neutral one, then it suggests that their heart and brain will probably not show pre-knowledge on which type of pic is coming 5 secs beforehand either. I’m starting wonder whether their heart infromation gathering and responses is also different from normals, just like it is with their brains.
Another article about a test of pre-stimulus responses in the body… this time with a roulette game. http://www.heartmath.org/templates/ihm/e-newsletter/article/2010/fall/new-study-supports-intuition.php
Darwin’s Mom – very interesting data. It’s my opinion that my ex spath doesn’t have any sense of intuition whatsoever. He was clueless when my son and I would discuss how our intuition impacts us.
BBE – I’m in the same category as LHW. I do feel I was blindsided because I thought the “red flags” were just typical human imperfections. Up until the last three years of our 30+ year relationship I truly believed he loved me. What a shock to see him in full view. Once I had access to the missing puzzle pieces and put it all together, I saw the true picture of his being. Prior to that it was like a partially assembled jigsaw puzzle with the majority of the pieces being scattered everywhere. I spent over two years trying to reconcile the chasm between who he portrayed himself as and his core personality within my own mind. Finally stopped trying because I can’t make sense out of crazy.
Perhaps I used the wrong word when I said “blindsided.” I too dismissed the red flags or even blamed myself.
It was only in retrospect that everything made sense. My intuition was that he was hiding something, which proved to be correct.
BBE,
I think I understand the question you posed:
you want to know if there were any spaths who DID NOT show ANY red flags. I propose that there is NO SUCH THING. The PD DOES show itself. The problem is lack of awareness of what the flag means and our own lack of boundaries (we excuse the flags because the truth is unpleasant).
Furthermore, I have been doing my own research with people who show red flags to see if the red flags could possibly be “normal human foibles” rather than signs of PD. So far, I have yet to meet ONE single person who displays a red flag, that DIDN’T display more flags later on or that didn’t show signs of toxic narcissism, parasitical behavior and bad judgement. Often times, those same people will show some very charming and lovable characteristics in addition to the red flags, but I think these are the covers that they develop to make themselves acceptable.
Some of the red flags are very subtle, you have to be very aware of them. Some are so subtle that they appear only as an over preoccupation with money or appearance. Then I found out that it was the tip of the iceberg. The person had those preoccupations because of their shallow affect and lack of meaning in their lives beyond material wealth.
NB,
It’s never mentioned in spath or psychopath profiles, but simply based on the tests with the pics done to measure pre-sentiment body awareness about future events, once the event has been put into motion I woudl doubt that a spath has an intuivive ability at all.
If they don’t show a difference in response to food or emotive pics then why would they even show an onset response prior to seeing either two types?
It would be interesting to see whether they show a lack of pre-sentiment response, heartwise and brainwise. If the heart is involved and actually the major info gatherer on future outcomes of events put into motion then it’s not solely their brain that does not function like ours, but their heart too. More, if the heart is actually so important to relay and prduce emotional feedback in the body as a sensation then their brains might be unresponsive not because the brain is impaired but because of the heart not being able to relay the necessary info to the brain in the first place.
The possible lack of ability to intuit seems to be able to explain their risk behaviour without thought of consequences. We healthies have a pre-knowledge and sensation at some level in our body of the consequences of our decisions which lead to a future outcome: it gives us anxiety (skin response, something that spaths tend not to have and why they can fool lie detectors), effects our heart rate and frontal brain wave action, and we’d feel it if enough pre-time is allowed in our body.
I’ll betya that a spath has no ability to intuit; and that part of the problem has to do with the heart sensory and emotional data gathering info!
And if this is so: then they might have a so-called business advantage preferred by bank boards regarding their risk taking… but healthies have an even better advantage: having valid hunches about future events!
Ok, I retract being blindsided in relation to Skylar’s post. There were signs, hundreds of them…..perhaps even thousands but as Sky said, there was a lack of awareness. I was unable to reconcile these items with both my own personality and the mask that was being portrayed so it went into the “disregard” file. Kind of funny when I think about the irony.
Sky, I’ve also been watching and gathering red flags from those around me. I agree, where there is one there’s a whole lot more we haven’t seen yet. Some of the red flags are so incongruous with who we are and the “mask” that they make no sense. Now I know if something doesn’t make sense and there isn’t a plausible explantion I will no longer be discounting it as simply human imperfection. Manipulation and disrespect from others scream out at me now like a beacon. It’s lonlier in my world right now (though how much lonlier can one be from living with a person who’s a facade?) and I’m ok with that. I view it as a step in the purging of the narcissists and spaths. When they are all cleared out, there will be plenty of room for “real” people.
Darwin’s Mom,
It all makes sense to me. My ex went with me to file a police report about something HE did. Behaved “normally” except for one very slight thing he did that the police could not see. When it got to the worst part of the event being reported, he released my hand, straightened his posture, put his hands in his lap and did the stone face thing. I remember thinking how odd it was that he was holding my hand right up until the worst part and then put up the wall. It’s the complete opposite of what would be expected. This is when my level of awareness started to change.