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Basil Borutski’s ex-wife says he went to extraordinary lengths to manipulate the court system and avoid penalties for repeated incidents of domestic assault.

Borutski faced a judge on three separate occasions to answer charges of assaulting Mary Ann Mask during their 26-year relationship, which began in 1982.

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Each time, Borutski walked out of court a free man. Twice he was acquitted at trial, and once the charges were withdrawn after he agreed to sign a peace bond.

The criminal charges spanned three decades — Borutski was charged in 1985, 1994 and 2008 — and marked the infancy, middle and end of what a judge once described as their “wretched marital relationship.”

Mask lived in fear of her husband for years, and was terrified on Tuesday when she learned that police were pursuing a gunman across the Ottawa Valley. The gunman left three women dead in his wake.

Basil Joseph Borutski, 57, faces three charges of first-degree murder in connection with those killings. All of the victims formed relationships with Borutski in the years after his marriage to Mask permanently collapsed.