(M.E.H.)

The ripples within society of an individual imbued with huge trust and respect betraying both and in the process horribly victimizing the vulnerable, leaving the public reeling with disbelief, are profound. Two women dead, after having been tortured and raped. And a number of women reliving the nightmares they were exposed to, bound and gagged, forced to provide entertainment for a warped sexual madman, degraded and left to somehow recover their self-worth.

Not to mention those touched by the depredations of a thief of their emotional security, dignity and privacy who stealthily entered the homes of long-time neighbours and took away the loot of conquest in underwear, pleasing a mind contorted by sado-masochism. That it was not only women whom he lusted after, but young girls whose underwear he sought to satisfy his convoluted sexual urges simply represented him more hideously.

Former Colonel Russell Williams was that elite member of the Royal Canadian Air Force charged with escorting and flying high-placed dignitaries and even royalty to various destinations as part of his duties, as an exalted military man whose future spread wider than an eagle's wings soaring over the Rockies. While he was base commander at CFB Trenton, he disported himself by shadowing, and awaiting his opportunity to strike, women whom he took by surprise and force, and shackled to his warped sexual fantasies.

Two of those women, Jessica Lloyd and Marie-France Comeau, were forced by this ultra psychopath to undergo unspeakable acts of violence and pain. Their final suffering disposition was to be murdered, while Col. Russell went on to plan other, follow-up atrocities, cavorting gruesomely through innocent peoples' lives. One of the lives he danced through on a more permanent basis was his wife for whom he does appear to have felt some residual and genuine responsibility and affection.

With her, after his arrest on a widely assorted number of criminal counts - including two first-degree murder charges, was an arrangement whereby her financial interests, integrally allied with his, as dual householders and all that would accrue through their marriage covenant through sharing his financial fortunes - the man legally surrendered his main assets to her possession. To free her from the eventuality of legal proceedings, anticipating that his victims might seek financial justice for their pain and suffering and ignominious experience at his pathological deviant hands.

Mary Elizabeth Harriman (her name protected under a court order to assure her privacy) took her own steps thereafter to distance herself from the predations of her husband, by seeking a divorce, and by seeking to protect her financial interests through being co-named along with him in a suit seeking damages for pain and humiliation and never-ending nightmares. Those victims of Russell Williams who have filed lawsuits claim that in anticipation of being held partially accountable, Ms. Harriman unethically, immorally, illegally took steps to shield her finances.

Ms. Harriman's lawyer was given firm instructions to request a publication ban and sealing order to protect her privacy on her divorce application which she intended to file. Ontario Superior Court Justice Jennifer Mackinnon compassionately granted the request. A judgement that was challenged by two news media entities, one a private newspaper, the other a public radio/television entity. Both contending that the public had the right to know details that might be of public interest, given the notoriety of the crimes committed and pending legal suits.

On appeal, however, that ruling was overturned through Ontario's highest court by Justice David Doherty who stated that "Purely personal interests cannot justify non-publication or sealing orders. The personal concern of a litigant, including concerns about the very real emotional distress and embarrassment that can be occasioned to litigants when justice is done in public, will not, standing alone, satisfy the necessity branch of the test."

The appeal court chose not to accept the claims of a psychiatrist who argued that Ms. Harriman had been more than sufficiently "harassed" by the news media, the psychiatrist's judgements held to be "characterized as speculation and presumption". The judge felt that there is "no reason to think that any publicity arising from the divorce proceedings will come remotely close to the publicity that surrounded Williams' criminal proceedings."

And so, a public that in all likelihood is not all that interested now, in the distance of time, about the whys, wherefores, whens and hows of the divorce proceedings between a convicted serial sexual sadist-murderer and his wife, will be entitled nonetheless to have the details that such proceedings will reveal. Ms. Harriman, through her continued and obdurate attempts to protect herself from public scrutiny and her assets from legal proceedings has managed to arouse an interest that would likely otherwise not exist.