10.19.2010 03:25 PM

All that I am going to say about what is happening in Belleville

This sentence in a number of stories caught my eye:

“During the attack, [the victim] pleaded with him not to post the photos on the Internet.”

So what do pretty much all of the media do?  They do what she begged the killer not to do: they post photographs that have the effect of further victimizing the victims.

Some days, I just don’t get it.

15 Comments

  1. wannabeapiper says:

    Hang him! I’ll do it…..Just saying………….

  2. Raymond says:

    I get it.

    The media are nothing more than parasites and vultures that know no shame.

  3. JH says:

    Warren – you lived and worked with these subhumans everyday in Ottawa. They are called the Lame Stream Media for a reason. They’d slit their mother’s throat for a headline, sell their children for a by-line and whore themselve everyday for ratings. Why are you surprised? They have no ethics, they practice gotcha! journalism and the Ottawa Press Gallery is absolutely the worst.
    In the US too, they rail about Fox News, yet look at the 400 who conspired to get Obama elected. It’s no differnece in this country. Most of us out here in middle class Canada equate them all, both right and left at about the same level as the politicians and lower than lawyers. Do you think the majority of the public even places any credence in them anymore ? They are without morals, class, or conscience. Not worthy of our time or trust.

  4. Kevin says:

    I don’t know. If I was a victim in this case, knowing we don’t have capital punishment, I think parading this person (I won’t type his name) and his paraphilia around, so that the lasting memory people have in the public mind will be of a creepy, hairy man in women’s undergarments, might be as close to a next-best thing as there is.

    He will rot in jail, and be remembered as panty-man.

  5. Dave says:

    But somehow it’s in the ‘public interest’ for every horrible detail to be made public. Can we not just lock up this guy for life, with no parole and spare the victims any further suffering? If ever someone deserved it, I think it’s clear this guy is a prime candidate.
    I just don’t understand our legal system, and the media that covers it.

  6. Michael Bussiere says:

    I know none of the gorey details. Absolutely none. From day one, when the first hint of horror hit the papers, I avoided it like the plague it is. That’s the only way to respond to the nice people who sit in offices in nice buildings and who decide to infest our psyches with this pollution.

  7. Derek Pearce says:

    I agree with Kevin— additionally, because of this, he’ll either pay further because a) the nature of / pictures of his crimes will attract “boyfriends” he sure won’t want once in prison, or b) in order to protect him from (a) he’ll have to go into solitary confinement a la Bernardo, which is an additional burden.

  8. MCBellecourt says:

    One of the victims who survived a Williams attack did actually succeed in having the publication ban on her name removed, I read yesterday.

    But, me and names…hers escapes me at the moment. Anyhoo, she states that she wants to go public with her story as part of her healing process.

    At first, one would question why she would want people to know who she is. On the other hand, her going public says that she has already come to the realization that she is not in any way, shape or form to blame for the attack–a point which other victims have a really hard time getting to.

    What I can’t figure out is why he isn’t being court-martialed for the murder of the young Cpl.–one of his subordinates. While, morally speaking, no victim is more important than the other, does not military justice cover military victims as civilian court cover civilians?

    Thoughts?

  9. S. Peterson says:

    I have been trying to avoid hearing and reading about the details of this crime. Seem it’s an impossibiltiy unless I avoid news channels and newspapers completely. Doesn’t the media have anything else to do?

  10. Kevin says:

    Warren:

    Could you explain something? Why is all this graphic detail being made public? I thought that after a guilty plea, the judge reviews the facts and delivers a sentence. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but it seems to me we didn’t see this level of detail in the Bernardo case. Why now?

    Another Kevin

    • Be_rad says:

      I heard Clayton Ruby on CBC answer this question. Paraphrased, it ensures that no unfounded rumours persist that certain things were covered up; that all aspects of the crimes were included. Secondly, by putting it on the record, it ensures that if he exercises his faint hope clause, it will be exactly that: faint hope.

      The media are a part of that process, and so there is some rationale behind them publishing details. It does not, however, excuse focusing on the more prurient examples and putting them on the front page where readers don’t have a choice of selfcensoring what they choose to read – or our children for that matter. The Sun chain was guilty of that just the other day, WK.

  11. Patchouli says:

    I’ve only seen photos of him in the women’s clothing, none of the victims except while living.

    But I’ve followed liveblogs of the trial. I don’t EVER want to see the crime photos, but part of me thinks we should know what these courageous victims went through so that we don’t, in 25 years, say oh, he’s served his time. We don’t ever need to see the photos or videos — burn them — but having a record of his depravity may serve a purpose one day.

    Because we “hear” all the time about murders and rapes, so much that the mere words don’t carry any meaning anymore. Knowing what they went through — and how they fought and begged to live — makes me think about them more as living, breathing, beautiful human beings — and also more about him as an inhuman(e) monster who deserves no mercy. There is no justice for what they went through, but I don’t want to ever hear about him receiving any kind of mercy.

  12. IC says:

    Words fail me on how editors and publishers like Cruikshank justify the photo odyssey of the sheer barbarism of Williams. And he gets to keep his index linked $60g’s a year pension because MacKay and the legions of the useless can’t do a damn thing to stop the payout. O Canada.

  13. Patchouli says:

    I kind of want to change what I said earlier; I have read enough today to agree that there is too much detail.

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