Boyd remembered Marsden as conservative, even as a student. She would later tell BC Report magazine, in an interview titled "The 'barracuda' speaks," that "radical feminists work at SFU, but I never felt comfortable being lumped together with them." But at a 1997 press conference she sounded like a woman who shared concerns with women's rights activists, when she proclaimed, "It is my fear that the media sensationalism will prevent other victims from coming forward. This would be the biggest injustice of all. If I could say a single thing to the other victims of harassment, it would be not to suffer in silence. It is only in coming forward and speaking out as a lone voice that one can really begin to heal and that we can ever hope to put an end to sexual harassment."
Marsden eventually returned to SFU as a student, telling the press that she had nowhere else to go and had been living in her car. University officials warned her to keep her distance from Donnelly, and remove reference to him from her Web site, or else get thrown out of student housing. It was around this time that criminologist Boyd, then 47, accused her of stalking him.
By phone, Boyd explained that as he had been a vocal critic of the school's handling of the Donnelly case, he was surprised when Marsden showed up to take one of his classes. The university denied his request to be exempt from teaching her, but agreed that he wouldn't have to evaluate her, since it might be a conflict of interest. Boyd said that partway through the semester, Marsden sent him an e-mail saying that it was going so well, she thought he should be able to grade her. When he refused, he claimed, she began phoning and e-mailing him frequently, asking him out, and "showing up after talks I gave in the community, or after classes, wherever I might be." But Boyd, who has a background in law, kept all her calls and e-mail messages. In 1999, Boyd took these records to the police, who reportedly warned Marsden to stay away from him. According to Boyd, she did.
Marsden was next charged with criminally harassing former Vancouver radio host Michael Morgan in 2002. According to the statement of facts in the case, Marsden and Morgan met in 2001; soon after, he called the police when Marsden sent a teddy bear and flowers to his home. Marsden was warned to stay away from Morgan. But according to court documents, contact resumed and the two began a consensual sexual relationship several months later. When Marsden traveled to the U.S. in 2002, Morgan began dating another woman. According to the court summary of events, this didn't go over well with Marsden, and she began calling and e-mailing him repeatedly, also contacting his new girlfriend, his sister, his son and his business partner, and waiting for him outside his apartment. Police investigated at Morgan's house, where they listened to several phone messages from Marsden described in court documents as "vindictive and threatening." Morgan turned over 38 e-mails sent by Marsden between Sept. 20 and Oct. 10, 2002. According to the court, Marsden also rigged Morgan's computer to send her blind copies of every e-mail he sent to anyone.
In May 2004, Marsden pleaded guilty to the criminal harassment charges. Judge J.W. Kitchen of the criminal division of the Provincial Court of British Columbia sentenced Marsden to conditional discharge and one year of probation. Having completed the year of probation, Marsden is now considered not to have a criminal record. Marsden reportedly told the judge, "I promise that I'll never be back before this court for the rest of my life -- you have my word on that."
Around the same time, it was widely reported that Marsden, who was trying to build a career in conservative politics, was forced to resign as an aide to MP Gurmant Grewal, after it was discovered that she had been working for him under the name "Elle Henderson." The press, which had been feasting on Marsden for seven years, also tore her apart for fudging her online résumé, on which she claimed to have assisted Connie Chung at ABC (ABC denied at the time that anyone by her name had ever been employed at the network) and that her writing had appeared in the National Post and MacLean's magazine (at the time, she had only had letters to the editor printed in either publication).
Marsden had been for some years writing conservative political commentary, publishing it at EtherZone, PoliticalUSA, GOPUSA and on her Web site, Rachel Marsden's Web Lounge, which had morphed from a sultry site for those who might want to book her for modeling, acting and commercial gigs, into a sultry archive of her news analysis and scanned images of notes to her from people like Ken Starr ("To Rachel, with all good wishes"), and links to more photos of her. (Marsden has since buttoned down her Web site considerably; she is now featured only in a shiny leather suit.) Marsden also began hosting a conservative talk show on CITR radio in Vancouver; guests included Coulter herself, Andrew Breitbart and G. Gordon Liddy.
In 2005, Marsden was hired as a columnist by the Toronto Sun. Senior associate editor Lorrie Goldstein said by phone that Marsden approached the paper. "We certainly knew the controversy surrounding her," he said. "We asked the questions about those controversies and we were satisfied with her answers and we are very happy with her. In the dealings I've had with her she's been a consummate professional."
Marsden's current editor, Rob Granatstein, who took over the paper's editorial pages in December, agrees. "We're delighted to have her because she has quite a voice, let me tell you!" he said.
He's right about that. In a recent column, describing how Vice President Cheney survived a bombing during a trip to Afghanistan, Marsden wrote, "For Dick Cheney, it must have felt just like any other day at the office: Folks who don't shave, don't bathe, and want him dead. Wow, feels just like back home!" She's called the speaker of the house "President Pelosivic," and has referred (rather poetically, all things considered) to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's serving up "a triple scoop of crazy, sprinkled with crazy, and topped off with warm crazy sauce."
"I think you'll see her for a while to come, as long as she keeps doing what she's doing," noted Granatstein, who two months ago moved her column to Sunday, the Sun's "biggest read of the week." Of course, doing what she's doing involves saying rude things about the cleanliness of foreigners (and liberals) and cashing in on what is her already eroticized reputation in her native country. For a woman who has been repeatedly ravaged by sex-scandal news cycles, Marsden has shown no hesitation about working her leonine good looks, online and now on television.
Next page: Stevenson confirmed that it would be fair to say that Fox is grooming Marsden