- Bernardo
tapes destroyed | Stephen
Williams 2003 | Stephen
Williams: 2005 | Marsha
Boulton |
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- Stephen Williams
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- His books and international
recognition
'Persecuted' in Canada,
author wins rights grant
By Kirk Makin, Justice Reporter,
Globe and Mail, , May 12, 2004
Canadian author Stephen Williams
joined the company of persecuted writers in global trouble spots
yesterday when he won a grant from Human Rights Watch, an international
organization that supports victims of political persecution.
By placing Canada alongside
countries such as Myanmar, Peru and Sierra Leone, the award sparked
debate between supporters of Mr. Williams and those who call
him a literary provocateur.
The $5,000 grant is intended
to help him defray the legal cost of defending himself against
criminal and civil litigation over two books he wrote about serial
killers Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka -- Invisible Darkness
and Karla.
"Everyone should be embarrassed
that an author could have the police raid his home and be put
in jail overnight for something he has written," said Chris
Waddell, a journalist and spokesman for PEN Canada.
"It isn't something people
would think could happen to someone in this country."
Mr. Williams was nominated
by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression.
Human Rights Watch spokesman
Marci Allani said yesterday that Mr. Williams qualified because
he is a victim of "a suppression of free expression. This
grant is given to writers who have been politically persecuted
and are in financial need. If the government there didn't do
anything wrong, they shouldn't be worried about anyone who writes
about it."
Mr. Williams was acquitted
in 2000 on two charges of disobeying a court order sealing videotapes
that depicted the torture of schoolgirls Kristen French and Leslie
Mahaffy. Last year, police laid two new charges of disobeying
a court order, as well as 95 charges that alleged he published
the names of rape victims in his books and on a website. The
Ontario Crown has also launched a civil action against Mr. Williams
claiming he was in wrongful possession of material used in the
Bernardo prosecution.
The grant has aroused anger
in some quarters.
"To be charitable, I suspect
this organization was ill-informed and ought to have spoken first
to the parents of those murdered children -- as I did,"
said former Ontario attorney-general James Flaherty, whose government
pursued charges against Mr. Williams.
"They might also want
to wait for our courts to deal with these cases before they start
bestowing awards," Mr. Flaherty said. "This causes
me great concern. I don't know this group, but I can't imagine
that anyone who is informed about the facts surrounding Homolka
and Bernardo and Mr. Williams's publications would be bestowing
an award on him as though he is some sort of politically maligned
person."
But Mr. Williams said Mr. Flaherty's
grasp of the situation is typical of his critics. "It is
a total misunderstanding of what has gone on," he said.
"Of all the criminal charges against me, none of them have
anything to do with the Mahaffys, the Frenches, their lawyers
or any crime-scene photographs."
When Ontario Provincial Police
raided his farm last year, they seized computers and files belonging
to both Mr. Williams and his wife, author Marsha Boulton. Most
have not been returned.
"I feel my life has been
threatened because of the destruction wreaked upon me and Marsha,
who has nothing to do with any of this," Mr. Williams said.
"They have levelled all of their resources at me, both civilly
and criminally, and they are trying to destroy us.
"It would seem to me that
this is a serious black mark on the Ontario government and the
Ministry of the Attorney-General and Canada generally,"
Mr. Williams added. "On the international stage, they have
now been lumped in with repressive, totalitarian regimes such
as those in China, Iran and Nigeria -- and numerous others guilty
of stunning human-rights violations and indignities to free speech
and open justice."
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CRIME BOOK MAY BECOME PAGE IN CANADIAN
LAW
By James Brooke, New York
Times, April 20, 2000
TORONTO - Stephen 'Williams,
the author of a best-selling crime book sees the day coming when
he will be called to a witness stand and ordered to identity
who gave him precise details of a gory sex murder scene in the
tale.
"As soon as I refuse to
do that, they are going to toss me in jail," the author
of "Invisible. Darkness" (Bantam) said in a telephone
interview from his farm north of here.
In Canada, a country often
called politely authoritarian, advocates for freedom of the press
hope the Williams case will set a precedent for the kind of reporter's
shield legislation that spread in the United States in the 1970's.
Today, 30, states have laws that give reporters varying degrees
of protection to shield their sources from public identification.
"This is one case where
Canada should follow its neighbor to the south; you can't have
vigorous reporting without laws protecting sources" said
Tom Goldstein dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism.
PHOTO CAPTION: Stephen Williams,
a writer, has so far resisted the orders of an Ontano court to
reveal his sources on the content of a videotape of two sex murders.
Mr. Williams says that he has not seen the tape.
"If you can't protect
sources and the sources can't be assured that they will be protected,
they hesitate to talk."
Normally, Canadian prosecutors
avoid confrontations on shild issues and the murders in question
have already resulted in convictions and jail time.
But in Canada where the founding
motto in 1867 was "peace, order and good government"
courts histoically have not believed there is much privileged
about the relationship between a reporter and a source.
"There has never been
a case in Canada where a journalist has been excused from answering
a question about a source," said Alan N. Young, who is defending
Mr. Williams.
And the prospects for setting
a precedent do not look good. Mr. Williams was charged with two
counts of disobeying a judge's order, and lost his motions to
have the case dismissed. The charges stem from the belief that
Mr. Williams saw a videotape of two sex murders that a judge
had barred from the public.
Pouring over Mr. Williams 657-page
book, detectives say they came up with 27 passages that they
believe were based on watching the tapes. Mr. Williams has denied
seeing the tapes, a denial he repeated in the interview. He said
he had gotten almost all the details from material available
to the public and would not say where he got the rest.
In court last fall, the government
stated that 69 people authorized by the court, most prosecutors,
had reviewed the restricted videotapes. Mr. Williams commented
"It would be professional suicide for anyone who had access
to the tapes to show them" to unauthorized people. They
would lose everything they had - lawyers would be disbarred,
doctors would have their licences revoked, cops would lose their
pensions and be fired."
So far, the Ontario judge,
David Fairgrieve, has ruled that Mr. Williams' book can be used
as evidence against him. He has deferred ruling on the issue
of journalistic priviledge until it comes up in trial. Prosecutors
in the case declined to comment. David Paciocco, a former prosecutor,
said Canadian courts "have a general aversion to recognizing
privileges."
Mr. Paciocco, a law professor
at the University of Ottawa, said prosecutors generally tried
to work around privilege claims. "No one wants to get into
a showdown with a stubborn journalist, one who might go to jail
to protect a source," he said.
Blurbs
"On an aesthetic level,
Karla is almost unique in our literature. It is an extraordinary
act of the imagination brought to bear on the facts."
- Professor Barry Callaghan
"The true crime is, in
the hands of artists like Truman Capote and Stephen Williams,
a kind of poetry, a kind of austere grand guignol, exuding gaudy
horror."
- George Elliott Clarke in
the Halifax Chronicle Herald
"I truly consider Stephen
Williams to be the Norman Mailer of Canada."
- Peter C. Newman
"Williams book, [Karla]....
is possessed of a moral authority...Karla continues in Williams'
inimitable vein. It is not light reading, and it exacts attention
and discomfort from its readers. As such, it is an imperative
contribution to a school of writing that has mangled Capote by
way of Yeats, asserting that the best 'lack all conviction';
'the worst...passionate intensity.'.... "It asks...that
we may, as progressive citizens, be willing to extricate our
loathing of Homolka from a pure understanding of jurisprudence....Williams'
disdain for the way in which Homolka has been characterized by
pressured psychiatrists whose vision of her serves only the public,
not impartial analysis - is, however uncomfortably, righteous.
Williams' argument suggests, persuasively, that the real deal
with the devil is done...regardless of our rational desire to
'exterminate the brute.' If A Pact with the Devil reads as a
uniquely perverse restatement of Dante's mad love for Beatrice,
so be it. I do not believe that Williams - in a sentiment he
attributes to Green Ribbon Task Force Inspector Vince Bevan -
feels that he has 'to have her.'... Williams is continuing to
ask for our ear, to listen to and look at what this woman did,
and how such information has changed us, irrevocably."
- Lynn Crosbie in the Toronto
Star, February 16, 2003
"Williams understood that
a unique and terrible psychopathology could be at work here and,
in the tradition of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood and Norman
Mailer's The Executioner's Song, he was determined to make its
acquaintance. Karla is about what Williams learned and it also
lets us in on what a difficult task he had..... Karla is no slap-dash
quickie aimed at culling sales from those with prurient interest
in the degradation and murder of young women. It is investigative
journalism at its finest, exposing how the police, Crown and
certain psychiatrists have a lot of explaining to do......For
Williams', Danson's renewed suggestion of criminal law breaking
must have made him feel a little like he is living under a Canadian
fatwah. He has already been investigated once by police and the
Crown, which brought serious criminal charges against him after
the publication of his first book. After a long fight, the charges
were dropped but the prosecution nearly cost Williams and his
wife, Marsha, their Ontario farm. ....Williams conclusions are
based in part on correspondence with his subject ( he is the
only journalist to have corresponded with her.) Homolka's letters
expose her as a gifted and, therefore, formidable woman, remorseless,
self-centered and, I am convinced, quite deadly....I am at loss
to understand how censoring a book that speaks the truth does
anything to enhance the memory of Tammy and Leslie and Kristen.
I have always believed that if there was a moment when the girls
knew they were going to die, they might have thought or perhaps
even spoke the words, 'You'll never get away with this.' Rejecting
Williams's sober, thoughtful and well-researched analysis of
how Homolka got a future is in my opinion disrespectful to the
memory of her victims. Would the girls themselves be satisfied
with the judicial outcome? I think not."
- Trish Wood in the Book Review
section of The Globe and Mail, March 9, 2003
"Laurie Greenwood, at
Laurie Greenwood's Volume II Bookstore, has no plans to stock
the book. 'Our customers like good mysteries and good fiction
and non-fiction, and it was my decision not to offer this book."
- Marc Horton in the Edmonton
Journal, February 23, 2003
"Williams uses letters
from Homolka herself, unreleased psychiatric assessments and
police statements along with other courses to craft a controversial
account of what happened behind the scenes to land a sweetheart
deal for a woman with a lengthy list of murders and rapes to
her credit. He lets the copious research he has carefully compiled
speak for itself and does an especially good job of presenting
an honest portrayal of Homolka.
- Jeffery Simpson in the Halifax
Chronicle-Herald, March 9, 2003
"He makes a strong case
for Bevan having bungled the investigation and then, to protect
his own career, concocting a battered-woman/sexual-sadist-victim
persona for Homolka in order to make her plea bargain palatable
to the public."
- Douglas J. Johnston in the
Winnipeg Free Press, February 23, 2003
"Karla is a nightmarish
account of police, prosecutorial, judicial and prison bungling
that should disturb everyone....this is solid investigative journalism
uncovering ineptitude on a massive scale....The contradictions
uncovered by Williams are astounding."
- Jim McNulty in the Vancouver
Province, March 16, 2003
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Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
