*TRIGGER WARNING*
For those who haven’t been following the case of Colonel Russell Williams which is being heard in an Ontario court this week, and who are therefore wondering what on earth a picture of women’s underwear is doing on my blog, the picture on the left is one of the evidence photos that the court has opted to release to the press. And I’ll be honest, I thought long and hard about the appropriateness of using this photo here, but given the fact that this is probably one of the least shocking images that’s been published by those covering this story, and being as this piece is about the sheer amount of information and imagery that’s been allowed into the public domain about this case, I decided to go ahead and use it.
But I won’t pretend that the question of whether or not to use the picture hasn’t caused a bit of a dilemma for me, as has the issue of how much of the information I’m discussing here I should actually link to. In fact I did consider not putting any links into this piece, but at the end of the day I’m a blogger, and it’s my belief, and it’s also written into the unwritten bloggers’ code of conduct, that all sources used should be acknowledged, and all quotes used should be attributable. So, to cut a long story short, there will be links. But please be aware, there isn’t a trigger warning in the world that’s big enough to stick on some of the information that’s available about the Williams case, and some of the links in this piece will take you to some of that stuff.
Now with all that out of the way: who the hell, you’re probably wondering, is Colonel Russell Williams.
Well, up until February of this year, Colonel Russell Williams was a highly respected and much decorated Colonel in the Canadian Air Force. He was the base commander at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Canada’s largest and busiest airbase, a man who, during his distinguished career, had been entrusted amongst other things with flying the Queen, Prince Philip and other foreign dignitaries around when they’d visited the country.
On Monday of this week however, Colonel Russell Williams pleaded guilty to 82 counts of breaking and entering and attempted breaking and entering, two counts of forcible confinement and sexual assault, and to the murders of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd.
By the end of the week Williams will have been sentenced to life imprisonment with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
In a move that’s led to much debate in the Canadian press, the judge in the case decided to allow the media to live blog and live tweet from the courtroom: they were allowed to take smartphones and laptops into the courtroom with them. The media was also allowed access to, and given permission to publish, more information than courts would usually allow into the public domain.
So for instance, google Colonel Russell Williams and you can find on the web (or on the Daily Mail website) some of the thousands upon thousands of photos Williams took of himself posing in the bras and pants he removed as trophies from the homes of the women and girls he targeted (many of whom, incidentally, hadn’t even been aware that they had had their homes broken into, their underwear stolen, or a man masturbating over their beds or their clothes or whatever, until after Williams had been caught – in some cases as long as two years after the actual offences had been committed).
Similarly you can google Colonel Russell Williams and read step by step accounts of the two sexual assaults, as well as quite shockingly graphic accounts of the two horrific murders, including such details as the victims’ last words, or what exactly they’d said to him when they were pleading for their lives.
Did I mention that Williams recorded everything he did? By which I mean, did I mention that aside from the thousands upon thousands of photos he took, Williams also filmed the assaults; he filmed exactly what he did to those poor women, and then stored all of the films, and the photos, and the underwear, back at his house. And he kept a log of all the crimes he committed. Thankfully it was decided that there was no justification for showing the films in court, or the photos of the assaults and murders, as it was deemed that descriptions of what they contained were enough.
The question that’s now being asked though, following the torrent of quite disturbing information that’s been released, is why? Not why did he do it – obviously that one goes without saying and he’ll no doubt be the subject of much psychological and criminological analysis for years to come; but why so much information? What public good can possibly be served by those of us on the outside knowing so much of the detail of this case? After all, Williams confessed to his crimes, he pleaded guilty, the court could quite easily have sentenced him without needing to hear all of this evidence.
As the Toronto Star said yesterday:
“Prosecutors had a full confession on the table and could have swiftly put the shamed military commander behind bars. A life sentence with no chance of parole for 25 years is guaranteed no matter how much the public learns about the string of sex crimes, and a flood of information won’t change the outcome for Williams or his victims.”
According to one of the officers involved, “the purpose of presenting such graphic evidence in court, was to give a clear picture of Williams if he ever applies for parole, which he can’t do for 25 years.”
While Adam Boni, who “worked as a federal prosecutor before turning to criminal law defence in Toronto…says the Crown may have wanted the public to know as much as possible to ensure that the scope of Williams’ crimes is understood. “It is clear that the Crown is wanting to provide the community with a very graphic snapshot not only of the types of crimes committed but of the psychology that was at play in the commission of these offences,” he said
The Star also quotes Ontario Provincial Police Det. Insp. Chris Nicholas, the lead investigator in the case, as saying: “Today the nation is getting a good dose of reality of just how evil people can be.”
To be honest I’m really conflicted about this. On one hand I do think it’s important for people to understand the horrific acts some people are capable of perpetrating against others. But on the other, I think there is such a thing as too much information, and I think the Canadian court and the Canadian media have come close to crossing, if not crossed altogether, the line between a public’s need to know and the individual’s right to privacy and dignity – in this case obviously the individuals I’m talking about are the two murder victims, who were afforded absolutely no dignity in their final hours, but who could maybe have been granted a bit more dignity than the courts have allowed after their deaths.
What has impressed me about the Candian media’s reporting though has been their willingness to ask these questions of themselves, and also their willingness to both have the debate with their readers and to warn readers about the graphic nature of the imagery and accounts they’re publishing.
Here’s CBC News for example:
“For the past week or more, journalists at CBC News have met in small groups, anticipating covering the Col. Russell Williams court proceedings.
We knew the hearing would be disturbing, and we knew we would have access to more material than usual in these kinds of proceedings. It is rare we get permission to report live from inside a courtroom. How would we cover it?
But really, the first question is “Why do we cover it?”
We cover it because we can be your eyes and ears in a courtroom, and we are committed to as open a justice system as possible.
We cover it because there is a strong public interest (and yes, maybe some of it is prurient) as well as a real need to understand how someone in a position of such authority, a senior member of the Canadian armed forces, could also commit these crimes. And no one seemed to suspect a double life.
The reality turned out to be more shocking than any of us knew.
The juxtaposed images of a man in full military uniform and the same man in young girl’s lingerie is an extraordinary illustration of someone who lived a double life.
Ours is a minimalist approach; we want to reflect reality using as few details as possible. So we showed one full photo of Williams posing for his camera in women’s underwear, and others that were cropped to the head and shoulders, to convey his demeanor. And remember, the photos we have access to, provided to Canadian media agencies by justice officials in the interest of openness, are benign compared to the exhibits those sitting in the courtroom have seen.
On another note, I have just followed all the testimony about the death of Cpl. Marie France Comeau, presented Tuesday morning.
What you have read is only a fraction of the detail supplied. We continue to struggle with the right balance in what we choose to post and air. Some of the choices are governed by our journalistic principles and purpose as a public broadcaster; some by our own very human reactions.
Esther Enkin is the executive editor of CBC News.”
Incidentally, on the Daily Mail piece I linked to earlier there was no warning given to readers about either the content of the piece or of the photos, whereas the Canadian press has consistently carried warnings such as:
“Editor’s Note: Readers may find photos in this gallery to be troubling. As part of our coverage, the Citizen is posting photos that capture the essence of the crimes of Colonel Russell Williams without being gratuitous. We are doing this because we believe it is vital that the true nature of his crimes be revealed to contribute to an understanding of the proceeding against him and his sentencing.”
“A note to our readers: Citizen reporters and editors are live-blogging from the Belleville courthouse, where Col. Russell Williams pleaded guilty on Monday to numerous criminal charges, including two counts of first-degree murder. Please be advised that some of the testimony revealed in court, and reported here, is expected to be extremely graphic.”
The Ottowa Citizen
But anyway, what do you think? Do you think the court was right to release so much information and that the Canadian press were right to publish it all, or do you think that there is such a thing as too much information, and that there are some details we really don’t need to know?
Too Much To Say For Myself 
I definitely think this is a case of too much information. I was talking to a Canadian acquaintance about this yesterday and she said she has found the coverage extremely upsetting and is appalled at the way it’s been shown and talked about on the radio, often with no warnings.
Good grief, I’ve read/seen enough here without having to search for any more information, which means that clearly I don’t need any more information and certainly don’t need to look at pictures of this vile man to have an opinion on just how vile his crimes are either now or in 25 years. Certainly seems to be a case of too much information to me.
Yes it should all be published. Everyone should know what men do to women. In reality, not just in the shitty crime novels women are so keen on.
It’s really fucking horrible and it happens all over the world. Every day.
the rise in these sorts of crimes against women directly mirrors the rise in and increasing acceptance of pornography that has occured in recent years. anybody who denies this is burying their head in the sand.
those poor, poor women.
i think the taking of photographs of his crimes was part of the abuse, so i disagree with the publication of the photos. there’s enough imagery of the abuse of women without adding to it.
In the past when particularly horrible murder cases have been reported (especially James Bulger and the victims of Fred and Rosemary West) I’ve avoided hearing the reported details because I think it’s deeply a) unncessary and b)distasteful. It’s simple prurience in most cases.
We DON’T need to know the grisly details – a summary of his crimes would have sufficed. There’s really very little reason for this to be reported, particularly in the UK – a very spurious ‘connection’ that he once flew the queen is being used.
The items of underwear pictured belonged to actual women. Who knows they might even recognise them. How do they feel?
This kind of real life murder-violence porn (and I use the word advisedly) gets even more disturbing when the victims are still alive, such as Jaycee Lee Duigard, or Natascha Kampusch, or Elizabeth Fritzl. We don’t need to know the details, it won’t stop it happening. And that’s the only thing that matters.
What Russell Williams did to the women he sexually tortured before murdering them is commonplace within mainstream pornography and the only difference is the women in these porn films are presumed to still be alive at the end of the porn film. We can supposedly ignore the fact the innumerable women and girls in porn films are not ‘acting’ when they are subjected to real male sexual violence and real sexual degradation because that is what men want to see – the complete and utter anniliation of a woman or girl. Scenes such as the ones Williams filmed himself committing against the women are what innumerable men are buying and masturbating to.
Williams is not a ‘deviant monster’ neither is he evil – he is a normal man who enacted the most extreme of belief in male supremacy. Williams did not consider these women to be human, instead they were disposable sex toys , to be used, subjected to degrading sexualised torture and then murdered because their usefulness to him had ended. Certainly not all men commit multiple rape or sadistically murder women but that does not mean innumerable men believe these crimes are crimes – rather they believe ‘no human was harmed hence filmed scenes of graphic male sexual violence and torture inflicted on women is just ‘fantasy.’
Remember too Williams filmed himself and kept stopping his sadistic violence against the women in order to position himself more centrally for the camera. Why did Williams want to film himself committing these lethal crimes of male hatred towards women? Was it because he wanted to view the images again and again in order to bolster his belief in his unstoppable male power and male domination over women – because they are not human but just men’s disposable sexualised objects?
The media most certainly has published far too much evidence and whilst one can claim ‘the public needs to know’ what I do see is not one iota concerning the fact Williams was a normal man. Instead already there is much discussion concerning Williams’ mental state and whether he is psychologically disturbed. All excuses of course because on no account must we join up the dots and recognise there are innumerable Russell Williams, innumerable Josef Fritzls, innumerable Fred Wests and the only difference is these other men are never caught or even convicted. Neither must there any analysis within the media concerning how masculinity continues to be constructed, wherein it is proclaimed that only men are human and only men have the right of sexual autonomy and dignity. Misogyny is now so rampant it is commonplace and no one appears to notice the never-ending male hatred of women – instead it is all just ‘irony’ or (male-defined) humour.
No instead the male-dominant media wants it both ways – on the one hand publishing graphic details of what one normal man did to at least four women , wherein he serially raped them all and then sadistically murdered two of the women. But at the same time the media claims ‘ we’ve published warning notices so if readers continue reading it is their fault not ours. No we aren’t guilty of exploiting at least four women – instead we are simply reporting the news.’ How convenient then that the media yet again is focusing on graphic details concerning male sexual violence against women. Titilating – of course it is because the victims are women not men.
Would male victims have been subjected to such media coverage – I doubt it very much – but then women aren’t human are we? We are just sexualised fodder for the male-dominated and male-owned mainstream media to exploit and thereby increase their sales figures.
Forget about the victims’ suffering – after all they are now dead and their only ‘usefulness’ is to once again perpetuate the myth there are supposedly a few isolated ‘monsters’ (sic) such as Russell Williams who have a Jekyl and and Hyde character. Ah so that explains it then – Williams was not a normal, respectable man – he is a monster. How long before someone claims ‘but these women should not have been so lax about their security – after all if they had been more careful Williams would not have raped and/or murdered them.’
It’s another win, win for male supremacy/patriarchy and a continuing lose lose for all women, because yet again women have been reduced to dehumanised sexualised commodities, in order that malestream media can increase its sales and ‘titilate’ male readers.
Yes, it becomes porn itself. It should not be published.
I think I’m with you Polly. I don’t think this information stops it happening, and to be honest, I can imagine some men actually getting off on the kinds of details and images that have been published. I think your description of it as real life murder-violence-porn is spot on.
And I have a confession to make. There are two documents that I read while researching this piece, that despite my statement at the beginning re transparency etc, I made the decision not to link to here. They’re copies of the acounts that were read out to the court and that describe in detail every single one of Williams’ crimes. I found them harrowing, and even emailed a friend saying that I wished it was possible to unread something once you’d read it.
But am I patronising my readers by making this decision on their behalf- by assuming that if I found something too much to bear, that they would too? I honestly don’t know. I just know that I found it really disturbing that these documents were even online, and that I think it would have been hypocritical of me to provide links to them while at the same time criticising their online existence.
A very thoughtful and intelligent post. And i agree with everything you say.
M2M
I live in Canada and I am of two minds. On one hand women here are pretty unaware that this kind of stuff happens and it is a good warning to get more aware. I don’t have a TV and get my information from the net and I followed three live blogs to get that which were all different and revealed different things as obviously there was alot of self censorship going on. The pictures bring it home hard. Unfortunately, I could not find a feminist analysis. Also the fact we do not have a death penalty so in 25 years he can apply for parole. People need to remember so that can’t happen. Most people just think this kind of stuff is in porn. However, on the other hand I
heard one police officer say that it would probably be a porn movie soon and this is where I wonder how many jerks were jerking off to it and loving it as if it was just porn. People don’t want to know because then they would have to start thinking about this stuff. The forensic cops that were interviewed spoke about how most people think men who do this are some kind of loser or had a bad childhood. Not this guy. This is as close as he would say ‘any man’. It is the unbelief that a colonel could do this that had to be broken and the pictures did that. This is real, not a movie.
Well we all have google Cath. Does anyone remember the fuss a while ago because sex offenders are entitled to have copies of all the documents relating to their case, and they were passing victim statements around prison as porn?
Presactly.
this was a really interesting post. it personally made me think about what andrea dworkin wrote about what happened after she went public about her rapes, and how she got letters from men saying how they fantasised about doing awful things to her. this is the ‘real life murder porn’ , as polly says. the fact that there are awful people in the world that will find this stuff titillating (and, seeing as 88% of porn is based on violence, it is hardly surprising).
i think there needs to be balance in news reporting. we need to know what happened, to expose and make real what goes on. but it moves in to the salacious, the sleazy. we don’t need to see the women’s underwear. we don’t need to know what she said as she died.
uk news has been bordering on this – particularly with the raoul moat situation. it was so ghoulish and it didn’t teach us anything new about the story, or say anything whatsoever about his crimes – the fact that he was a serial domestic violence offender seemed to get very lost in the rolling news coverage that was basically waiting for a person to die.
Apropos to today’s discussion, last night I read a recap of Australian pornstitution convention SexPo, where among the booths were men selling T-shirts with ‘Wipe ya eyes princess and harden the f*ck up'” and much more.
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/40310.html
“Genital repair of another kind was being offered by a charity called Clitoraid. A devastating human rights violation against a woman’s bodily integrity is made sexy. They were raising money for female genital mutilation repair in Africa, with slogans such as “Give a Stranger an Orgasm”, “Help Build a Pleasure Hospital” and “Adopt a Clitoris”.
There were photos of smiling African women and a baby mid mutilation. A staffer told me they stopped showing a film of a child being cut as too many men stood around laughing.”
I shouldn’t comment, but, for what it’s worth, I can’t leave this unchallenged. Jennifer:
For god’s sake, this is rubbish. Terrible, terrible rubbish. It’s shameful. Williams very clearly is a “deviant monster”, in as much as those terms have meaning. He’s practically the dictionary definition of one. He’s (almost) a textbook escalating psychopath, albeit starting late, and it helps nobody to brush under the carpet the very specific series of events that created him and enabled him to do this by reducing him as ‘normal’.
There are certainly problems with pornography (including mainstream pornography), which obviously objectifies women. It also objectifies men, selling an outrageous idea of what male sexuality is and should be. But Williams is of a different sort, one where pornography may or may not (though it seems likely) have provided an overall structure for totally abnormal fantasies. From the description, like Fred West, he appears to be basically a necrophile (which implies victims as posed, lifeless objects rather than necessarily dead). There is a debate to be had on the connection between pornography and that, but it’s enormously distasteful to the victims to shorehorn it in so poorly.
Talk of “what one normal man did to at least four women , wherein he serially raped them all and then sadistically murdered two of the women” is disgusting and infantile, and I can’t believe it hasn’t been challenged. “Ah so that explains it then – Williams was not a normal, respectable man – he is a monster” invokes (critically) the religious oversimplicity of good and evil but replaces it with another oversimplification. He so obviously isn’t a “normal man” that it astounds me to be the first to point it out. Oh, and “Would male victims have been subjected to such media coverage – I doubt it very much” is disingenuous, as, if they had been, I can see the obvious reply “the media cares more about male victims” as being quickly forthcoming.
On topic: the coverage was too much. It was unnecessary, and deliberately so: ‘this is shocking, but it’s not our fault, it’s up to you’. The photos and transcripts just were particularly awful.
I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, this all happened in a judicial context, with a court formally condemning the actions of this man. Lines were being drawn. If it rips up the notion that women are “asking for it” and enjoy abuse anyway, and if it means that women who are abused and raped and otherwise sexually tortured get a fairer hearing in a justice system, then there is justification. However, I am afraid that what was also going on was the usual Daily Mail hypocrisy. Claiming to be attacking various types of sexual perversion, it was artfully serving up examples so that the perversion could be enjoyed, while the person indulging him or herself could bask in self approval by appearing to endorse the condemnation. Actually, human nature being human nature, I think both things will happen, and that the truly nasty details would leak out anyway (police forces being very leaky things, especially where pubs and a few fivers are concerned) or be (salaciously, enthusiastically and obsessively) invented. I would have banned the instant reporting of the tweeting and blogging variety (which removes any chance of responsible consideration of what is being said or shown) but otherwise allowed professionally sober reporting of whatever was shown in court.
“I shouldn’t comment”
You’re right. You shouldn’t comment. Don’t challenge Jennifer – she’s right, you’re wrong. You add nothing to this discussion.
Men’s porn tells us the story of your fantasies and your hatred to women day in day out. I guess most of you don’t do what you’re fantasising about to women because you’d get locked up (although it’s amazing what many, many blokes get away with in relationships or when they are paying a women), but sometimes some bloke just gets carried away and he gives his porno fantasies free rein.
The story of this murderer of women is a story of porn, but not one of the media outlets reporting it are making the connection.
“You’re right. You shouldn’t comment. Don’t challenge Jennifer – she’s right, you’re wrong. You add nothing to this discussion.”
sheesh who died and made you queen?
You’re right. You shouldn’t comment. Don’t challenge Jennifer – she’s right, you’re wrong. You add nothing to this discussion.
Thank you, Sarah! That is exactly how I felt. Men can never keep their mouths shut anywhere women are working through the trauma of their crimes against us. Never mind how rare these spaces are in the first place. How gross is it to come to a thread like this and defend men?
Sarah and Valerie M –
I’m sorry you feel that way. Despite what you say, I wouldn’t dream of going onto a blog “anywhere women are working through the trauma of (men’s) crimes against us” and defending men in general. But this blog post is actually questioning the extent to which the media should go into detail on crimes: whether that information is ‘useful’ for the public, or just salacious. I don’t read it as particularly gendered – although, of course, depictions of violence in the media inherently are – and I don’t think my response to Jennifer’s comment is any more out of place or derailing than hers was originally.
But, if it makes you feel better, or if you think it’s somehow more helpful to the thread or the world – okay, Jennifer, you’re quite right. Williams, who raped tens of women and tortured and murdered two was just a normal man.
Thanks for your incredibly patronising, dismissive, and sexist response, dd. It really helped me demonstrate my point.
Valerie – you don’t think your response to me was “incredibly patronising, dismissive and sexist” in the first place?
Tell me where I replied to you at all before the comment right above the last thing you said. Doesn’t the ‘Thank you Sarah,’ make you think at all, that I might not be talking to you? And no, women cannot be sexist to men.
Valerie –
“Women cannot be sexist to men” is obviously up for debate. My comments weren’t sexist anyway – tell me why they were, if you can – but, regardless, I’m glad you agree by omission that women can at least be patronising and dismissive to men, and that you were to me. And no, of course, you weren’t directly replying to me. But you were, as per my words, responding to me, and it’s disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
Look – all I’m doing is disagreeing with Jennifer’s assertion that Williams is a “normal man”. The comment struck me as ludicrously extreme, so I said so. If you agree with Jennifer, argue the case. If you think I’m off-topic, then you must think she is too. But all this ‘don’t comment here because you’re a man’ stuff is pointless, especially when my “patronising, dismissive” comment above is very obviously just my agreeing with what she originally said.
For what it’s worth, moving on from the OP, I think commercial pornography is insidious and awful at best, and that it quite clearly informed Williams’s developing fantasy. But I don’t think it caused it, and I don’t think it’s normal for average men to become, or want to become, serial rapists and serial killers, and surely the subject is too important to sweep under the carpet so glibly? Williams is not ‘normal’. He’s the dictionary definition of an escalating psychopath. Christ, never mind the offense, don’t we owe the victims a better analysis than ‘sorry, he was just normal’?
damagedoor
I’m not sure Jennifer was trying to make the point that Williams was normal as in “just like every other bloke” – she even points out that “Certainly not all men commit multiple rape or sadistically murder women”. My interpretation was/is that she’s arguing that painting such men as monsters or as somehow intrinsically evil is unhelpful, because by othering them in that way we lose any analysis into how and why some men end up committing such heinous crimes.
It’s easy to say: “Williams is an evil monster, that’s why he did what he did” and let the discussion end there. What challenges us, and society as a whole, is when we say “actually there are no such thing as monsters, except in children’s imaginations, and there is no such thing as good and evil (unless you’re religious), there are just people, so how is it that some people act in such unimaginable ways? What is it about society, about masculinity, that helps create this kind of atrocity?”
According to all accounts Williams was as normal a bloke as any you’re likely to meet, and yet obviously he wasn’t normal in the sense that any of us would recognise. So how did this happen to him, how did he become a cold-blooded rapist and torturer of women?
Personally I don’t believe he was possessed by Satan or any other evil spirit, or that he was some hideous monster disguised as a normal bloke. He was just a man, indistinguishable from the outside from any other man. And if we don’t try and analyse the forces that helped to form him, if we simplistically reduce him to the terrifying bogey man of all our nightmares, we risk countless other men developing the same way that he did, and we risk countless more women being murdered and tortured at their hands.
Cath –
Thanks for the reply. I totally agree with everything you say there, and perhaps I’m misreading Jennifer – in which case, I genuinely apologise. From the repeated use of ‘normal’, I read that she was saying Williams was a normal man enacting desires that normal men all have to some degree – ie a version of the ‘he was just possessed by Satan’ argument (“We don’t need to understand him – he was normal, and that’s just what al normal men secretly want to do”).
Williams was obviously adept at appearing normal, but there’s clearly something in his past, probably his early years, that moved him towards an aberrant, sadistic sexuality that he learned to hide (and I suspect there are many, many crimes of his that will, horribly, never come to light). I totally agree we need to understand that, and I think, especially in this case, that pornography is likely a critical element. As a society, we need to look at how that happened, and try to stop people like him occurring in the future.
Anyway – Jennifer, if I’ve misunderstood your point, I’m sorry.
Maturity. 😉
Cath – what an eloquent and articulate explanation of what i also believe was the sentiment behind this post, and the one i 100% agreed with.
M2M
On the “too much information?” question, I don’t think the photo you included in this post was offensive – on the plus side it shows the scale of the number of women violated in one way or another by this creep. It also begs the question of why authorities don’t treat these ‘minor’ offences seriously, and seem to ignore the escalation factor – in this case several rapes, attempted rapes, and murder.
I agree with Polly in that we do not need to know all or most of the grizzly details of the crimes, a summation is all that is needed. There are indeed many men who get off on real life murder/torture/rape stories, and you just know that for them, merely reading it will cease to be enough, and they will eventually escalate themselves.
This case now casts a great deal of suspicion as to the harmlessness of males dressing up in women’s clothes/underwear and similar fetishes. He could have just bought women’s underwear, but the thrill was obviously stealing these items of ‘womanliness’ from these women, symbolic rape in other words. He then escalates to actual rape.
If a woman who killed four unborn children and hid them in a cupboard was referred to as “just a normal woman” I’d take offense.
Referring to a man like this as a normal man is therefore understandably offensive and a pretty pessimistic appraisal of men.
newborn children, sorry
Valerie –
Not sure if that was directed at me, or how it was meant, but I’m more than happy to apologise if I’ve misread someone. And since my point was intended to be exactly what Cath said, I suppose we were all on the same page all along – so, for what it’s worth, I apologise to you as well.
damagedoor –
Genius! It was his mother’s fault. Of course.
earwicga –
No, of course not. He wasn’t born evil though, was he? Something, somewhere along the way, led to him lacking empathy with other people, and seeing them as objects to suit his needs, especially sexually. With people like him, that usually happens early on and during puberty: that’s where the associations are made (or not made). It could possibly be as a result of his mother (is that not possible?), but it’s probably more likely to be as a result of his father’s behaviour. It’s nobody’s “fault”, in a straightforward way, but I can’t imagine that, even without using pornography in later life, he grew up with a particularly healthy and reciprocal attitude to relationships. I don’t know, but that’s not generally how serial killers occur. Sexual problems, in some form or other, are usually present.
Look: my view is simply that it’s his fault. And all I was ever saying was it helps nobody to see him as “normal”, with his crimes just attributed to him being a normal man, because that’s what all normal men want to do, the end. I was only ever disagreeing with what I read Jennifer as saying.